


In Another Lifetime

by NoxianTaco



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Angst, Coming of Age, M/M, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-05-19 08:52:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 39,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5961451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoxianTaco/pseuds/NoxianTaco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Growing up in Noxus is hard, especially for someone unlucky enough to have met a Demacian at nine years old, befriended him, and fallen for him. The impossible rift that divides them inspires Darius to start a campaign which has much bigger implications for their two nations as a whole. Only bloodshed will fill the rift. More and more bloodshed, until there is no blood left to spill.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The first time they met was on the east bank of the Serpentine River, north of the Howling Marsh but not far enough for the icy winds of Freljord to make their mark on the environment. It was warm here, and it smelled of spring pollen.

A dark-haired boy sat in the grass on the edge of the water, crude fishing rod in hand. He had been there all morning, stark still, frowning as though it were natural. A small pile of fish lay dead on his right hand side.

When the bushes rustled at the end of the clearing behind him, he turned instantly, gripping the dagger at his belt. But there was no threat. Just another boy who had fallen face-first out of his hiding place, and was sitting up to hold his head and grimace in pain.

After a time, he opened his eyes and scoffed, “What are you looking at?”

“Your oversized skull.”

“My mom said it means I’m smart.”

“She’s an idiot.”

He stood up and pointed an accusing finger. “You can’t say that about my mom!”

“I just did.”

For a moment it seemed like he wouldn’t do anything, just stand there huffing until his cheeks were red because either he didn’t have the guts or the wits to retaliate. Then he picked up a loose branch on the ground beside him and came charging forward.

The branch cracked against Darius’s upraised forearms and pushed him backwards into the water, but his assailant came right along with him, carried by the recklessness of his charge. The river was shallow and the current weak. When they had both made it back ashore, the dark-haired boy punched the other in the face, shouting, “The hell was that for!”

“I told you!”

“Get out of here or I’ll slice you to pieces!”

“You don’t scare me,” he said sternly, despite the dagger being brandished before him.

Darius didn’t want to slice anyone to pieces. He wanted his fishing rod not to be floating in pieces down the river, so he could bring home enough fish to last several days at least. And he wanted to know what kind of idiot would start a fight like that against a total stranger in a place like this.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Garen,” the boy responded proudly. “A warrior of Demacia!”

The other narrowed his eyes. “You’re scum.”

“Says the one threatening an unarmed man with a weapon.”

“Get out of here.”

“You can’t tell me what to do.”

Darius didn’t think he had ever met someone more idiotic, not to mention filled with false pride. This life wasn’t worth taking. He sheathed his dagger, walked to the shore, and began to string up the fish he’d caught, remarking, “Suit yourself.”

Garen was still sitting on the ground where he’d landed after the punch. He said, “The emblem on your pouch. It stands for Noxus. Isn’t that far away?”

“This is the only good place to fish.”

“Is the water in Noxus too dirty for fish to survive? I bet everyone pees in it.”

He ignored Garen, slung the fish over his shoulder, and walked. He was nine years old and Garen one year younger; they didn’t understand why they hated each other, only that they did. It would be a long time before the war propaganda began to make any sense, and even longer before they thought for themselves despite it. As was the universal flaw of custom. 

* * *

The walk was long, and would have been impossible if not for the old man who drove his wagon up and down the westward road from Noxus each week, delivering supplies to a small village on the edge of the mountains. Darius had tried to steal a basket of fish one day and been surprised by the old man’s reflexes. Instead of chastising him, or worse, the old man had greeted him with understanding, and told him that nothing could beat the fresh fish of the Serpentine River; the fish on the wagon was often several days old, and questionable in origin.

Since then he had gone to the river once, maybe twice, a month. The wagon left Noxus before the sun rose and returned as it set. The old man spent several hours in the village visiting members of his family; during that time, Darius could jog to the river and fish.

It always unsettled him, leaving Draven alone for the full length of a day. The boy wasn’t afraid of anything - not of killing, or of death. This could be a good or bad thing depending on how you looked at it. He was always prepared. He was also reckless.

But he was the one who always told Darius to go, because he got tired of scraps, and Darius couldn’t say no when he imagined the smile on Draven’s face, watching fresh fish roast on the fire.

The imagined crackle of fire was interrupted by the crack of a tree branch overhead. There was a shout, a flurry of limbs in the corner of Darius’s eye, and then a splash. This was a different part of the river - a deeper part. Darius had relocated in the hopes of not running into the Demacian boy again, and here he was, smacking up water as he floated downstream, screaming that he couldn’t swim.

Darius watched with narrowed eyes until his very last chance to successfully intervene. Something willed his mind to quiet and his legs to move - the last part of him that was purely human and not Noxian, the same part of him that brought him to the river to fish for Draven, a part of him that was instinctive and not under his control.

The boy was about to disappear around the bend when Darius dropped his rod and sprinted until he was close enough to jump. The cold anger of the water wrapped around all his limbs at once, but he felt a panicked hand clutch his forearm and fought, and kicked, and clawed at the shore until he had dragged them both onto it. The wind bit their wet skin like crabclaws.

Darius was about to stand up and start yelling. The Demacian boy, on his hands and knees, looked up and in his eyes was all the intensity of the water smoothed into clear blue solace. The tides of his panicked heart threatened to spill out the corners onto his lashes. His lips curled into something frightened and ugly, and yet, out of them came a voice of pure sincerity and gratitude. "Oh, thank you! I thought I was gonna die!"

In the end, Darius wasn’t angry at all. He only pretended to be, as he looked to the side and spat, “Don’t be so stupid next time.”

“It’s because I was watching you!” Garen shouted, as though saying so helped the situation at all. “I wanted to ambush you, and I… I… You ended up saving me.”

“Like I said,” Darius muttered. “Don’t be stupid next time. I’d beat you even if you ambushed me. You’re clumsy and weak.”

“I want to be strong like you.”

“You’re not-”

“I want to save people too!”

The outburst shocked Darius into silence. Strength was not for saving people; it was for conquering them. He didn’t have the heart to break this truth to the boy beside him, who was gazing at him as though in some distant dream where he was a hero, too.

Pulling him out of the river had been a mistake, and yet… Darius had done it before he’d even realized what he was doing.

“We have to cross back over. Let’s walk upstream where the water is slower.”

“Okay,” Garen said, suddenly beaming. “You know, I always thought Noxians were bad people.”

Darius had nothing to say about this, at least not out loud. There were good Noxians and bad Noxians. The good ones were strong, and they brought order and glory to Noxus. The bad ones cowered under the wills of others, rotting into fear and frailty, offering nothing to the world except their witless and parasitic will to live.

He didn’t know anything about Demacians except that they fought against the ideals of Noxus, which had to mean that most of them were bad.

“But you’re not a bad person,” Garen proceeded, walking beside him. “You just seem angry.”

“I’m angry because it’s too cold to be falling in rivers now.” He crossed his arms, shivering, clutching the fabric of his soaked shirt. “And you wasted a lot of my time.”

“I won’t try to ambush you next time.”

“Don’t bother coming back here.”

“It’s not your river. I can come here if I want to.”

“Well then learn how to swim. I won’t jump in after you next time.”

Maybe it was true, and maybe not. But Darius knew one thing, and that was that he didn’t want to fall under the control of anything, not even his own instincts.

They had arrived at a shallower part of the stream which was broken by rocks in the middle. Darius began to walk across them. Garen stood perched on the shore, looking downwards with trepidation. His hesitation was understandable; he had almost drowned not minutes ago.

“Could you teach me?” he asked.

“To swim? Why would I waste my time on you?”

“Afterwards I’ll help you fish. We’ll catch twice as many and you can have them all.”

Two rods didn’t necessarily mean twice as many. Still, something made Darius want to accept - maybe the encouraging certainty in Garen’s voice, maybe the genuine smile that was sure to cross his face, even as he stood at the grassy brink of his fears. Those were two things that were rare to find in Noxus. People smiled sinister smiles and were only certain when they meant to sin.

“Fine,” Darius said, and even as he did he chastised himself for falling under the control of this boy’s unselfish demeanor. He wished he could take it back but he couldn’t. Garen hopped onto the first rock and kept going, smiling as though there had never been anything to fear. 

* * *

The water was much nicer in the summer. They could sit on the shore and feel the sunlight dry their bare skin, the wet fabric of their shorts keeping just enough of them cool that they didn’t have to jump in again.

In the past two years they had run into each other six times. Garen knew how to swim now, at least well enough not to drown if he was washed downstream. Darius found himself feeling less empty riding back on the visits when Garen did happen to be there.

“Jarvan’s been talking about girls,” Garen said, in his sudden and unapologetic manner, which was loud enough to require warning but offered none. “He said he’ll have to marry and become king when he’s older. When he said he wasn’t interested, his dad made him kiss the serving girl and she ran away with her face all red. Do you think I’ll have to do that too?”

“You’re not royalty, are you?”

“No, but my family’s pretty important.”

“Then you shouldn’t have to.”

“If I do, I want to make someone’s face red too. I don’t want to trip over myself like I always do. So that’s why I was wondering-”

“Why does it matter to make someone’s face red?” Darius muttered, angry because the only type of red that mattered was blood. The ability to make someone’s face red with blood - to defend, to survive. He was envious of this carefree talk. He was envious of Garen’s happiness.

“I don’t know… It just seems nice.”

Darius grimaced.

“Maybe I could make your face red. Then you’d see what I mean!”

He was shocked into looking over and there Garen was with his infectious certainty, leaned on his arm as though ready to pounce. He was still young and innocent to the knowledge that girls were different from boys, which mattered, at least, in Demacian politics.

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean, I could…” He leaned forward and placed his hand on the shore in front of Darius’s crossed legs. The silt gave way under his fingers and he fell towards the water. Darius reached out to catch him - once again, that instinct he hadn’t learned to beat - but the silt seemed to have stopped sliding because they both stopped each other with their lips, still cold from the water.

Darius scrambled backwards, his fishing rod discarded and just barely hanging onto the shore.

“Your face is all red,” Garen stated matter-of-factly, satisfaction bleeding into his cocky voice; in their time apart he had gained the beginnings of a more mature, intelligent ego. “Why?”

“You don’t just-” Dirt scraped up into Darius’s fingernails. He was still finding his breath, still trying to figure out if he was mad or not. He thought he should have been. “Why did you do that?”

“I wanted to see if I could.”

The answer was too vague to offer any meaning. Darius found himself feeling resentful towards it anyways, and to avoid the issue he got up, retrieved his rod, and slumped back down upon the shore to toss his line out.

After several moments, Garen was still watching him, admiring the shades that tinted his normally colorless cheeks, the frown that creased his boyish lips. “Are you really so repulsed by me?”

The frown became more agitated. “You can’t just kiss someone,” Darius said, repressing the explanation he wanted to give, which was that nobody had kissed him since his mother, and that was a memory he wanted to bury more than anything else.

“I know that. I saw the serving girl crying the other day. The one Jarvan kissed.”

"Then why...?" Darius started, but when he looked over Garen had turned once more towards the shore, the confidence gone from his expression. His bright eyes and willing smile had darkened in the shadow of the trees.

"Nevermind." 

* * *

There were three people who maintained a constant presence in Darius's life, constant meaning they appeared again and again, not necessarily often but always eventually, and had a significant influence on his thoughts and actions.

The first was Draven, who, of course, was bound to him by blood, but Darius liked to think that they had stayed together all these years for reasons beyond the coincidental claims of fate. You didn’t keep somebody around to split your meals unless they meant something to you. Draven wasn’t a responsibility; he was a warm body at Darius’s back on cold nights, a heart to confide in, a reassuring smile when hope was on the verge of disappearing. He was invaluable. He was a reason to live that could never be replaced.

He was a reason to live, but much more importantly than that, a reason to reach beyond the bare minimum which confined all living things. By himself, Darius was sure he would have the will to survive; that was instinct. It was Draven that led him to the basket of fish wedged in the center of the wagon when he could have snatched a loaf of bread easily off the edge. It was Draven's smile.

The brown-cloaked man at the wagon’s side, beard frazzled and face heavily freckled with age, had turned and caught Darius by the back of his shirt before he could make off with the basket. The old man should have been an easy victim - too frail to chase even if he did notice the theft as it happened - but Darius should have been astute enough to realize that the old man would never be able to keep a business in Noxus if that was the case.

“Judging by your condition, I’m sure you need that more than I do,” he had said, voice dark but unthreatening. In that moment Darius could have yanked himself away and run off. “But before you go, let me tell you there’s a river near the end of my trade route where you could fish all you want and have it fresh. I got those from the back-alley market. No telling where they came from or how long ago.”

Darius had yanked himself out of the old man’s grip, but not run away. His voice had come out quiet and trembling; this was the first time he’d been caught. “How far is it?”

“About four hours west. Come with me now and we’ll be back at sundown.”

“You don’t care?”

“It’s not like the horses’ll notice. You hardly weigh more than that basket you’re carrying.”

So he had settled himself in the back of the wagon, between the basket he’d tried to steal and a sack of potatoes that almost certainly weighed more than him, and watched the dark gates of Noxus fade behind the morning fog. Sometimes the old man hummed. Sometimes he talked, almost as though to himself, about market prices or relatives or the latest news. Sometimes he rode the whole way through in silence. He never asked Darius anything, but Darius got the feeling he was willing to listen if Darius ever did decide to talk.

One could say that their relationship was purely professional, because of how little they knew about each other, except that doing something for another without expecting anything in return was an inherently personal action. The old man must have understood something that other Noxians didn’t. Darius couldn’t figure out what that was, but he was glad to get on the wagon every other week and bring fresh fish back to his brother.

He had grown so comfortable that he often snoozed until the wagon came to a stop. Then he hopped off and started towards the river, which was a fairly quick jog through open fields. Soon trees rose up and a dozen rows within he would find the clearing.

A tall boy was dropping his bag near the shore. He turned when he heard Darius, and his blue eyes lit up, and his lips widened in a smile that was sure to be followed by some cocksure statement of greeting. His hair had grown out almost long enough to cover his eyes. He was fourteen now, and handsome, and Darius saw him as a boy of royal blood even though he wasn’t, because he was loud and fearless and he stood tall and spoke with a propriety and confidence unlike anything Darius had ever heard. He was not plagued by the characteristic awkwardness of his age, but instead boasted clear skin and boyish, enthusiastic beauty. Darius had not looked in a mirror recently enough to find out if the same could be said for himself, but now Garen's beaming presence made him wonder.

He was the third person who mattered and the last person who should have. A boy from Demacia who had stumbled upon Darius’s stretch of river all those years ago and never stopped coming. His influence shone through in the simple fact that Darius had come to expect him - maybe even to look forward to him.

“I’m glad you came,” Garen said. “I would have ended up with a pile of fish and nothing to do with it. You’ve got me into a habit that would feel wrong to break.”

“I come every other week, don’t I?”

“Sure. Mostly. ”

“You don’t owe me anything anymore. You have friends in Demacia you could be spending your time with.”

“I could be.” He threw his line in, and watched the movement under the water’s surface with increased intensity. “More fish will swim along here no matter how many you and I pluck out. People aren’t so replaceable.”

Darius glanced over with an expression half-critical of such a meaningless poetic cliche. The other half was revering of the same thing. It took courage to speak one’s thoughts so unapologetically, and Garen always did - or maybe it just took brash oblivion.

“Anyway,” Garen continued cheerfully, leaning back on one hand. “I had a rough morning and I find this is the only place I can get away and forget about all that.”

“Something happen?”

“I spoke to the Captain of the Vanguard, hoping I could gain favor with him for when I’m of age to enlist. He asked to spar with me. He told me I was clumsy and weak.” The look he shot proved that they both remembered when Darius was nine years old and made the same judgment. It failed to convey how Garen admired him for knowing something like that so young. He was not only strong, but his mind had advanced well beyond its years in both cleverness and fortitude.

“Don’t let it discourage you. Anyone can change.”

It was a rare instance of compassion from someone who had been taught by the streets of Noxus to care only for oneself, or die. Darius didn’t see it as compassion, only truth.

Nevertheless it drew Garen closer to him, in more ways than one; he had distributed most of his weight in Darius’s direction, fishing rod perched carelessly on the opposite knee, head tilted serenely against his shoulder as he gazed forward into the trees. “If anything, I’m more determined than ever.”

Then he looked over and all inner composure crumbled for a moment under the weight of his unwanted affection for this Noxian boy, this feeling he couldn’t shake - an odd mixture of reveration and foreboding - which had haunted him in both expected and unexpected places since he’d been saved from the river six years ago. Along the beach just outside the capital, the tides seemed to grasp at his ankles and only thin arms around his waist kept his feet on the sand. At the dinner table, there was a shadow in the corner, roasting fish on an invisible fire; the walls blurred from its heat. Under the covers of his bed, the changes of adolescence had him more and more restless, and vague images worked him up until he could sleep. All of them had two things in common: a flat chest, and lips cold from water. They were the only lips he had ever felt.

“Sometimes you look at me with these wide eyes, like you want something,” he observed, since Darius was looking at him too, and he’d seen that look before. It was normally directed towards him when he was talking, and he looked over not expecting to be jolted so suddenly out of his thoughts by those piercing pupils and their endless jade fortresses. Normally he was able to pretend he didn’t notice. Today - and all at once - he felt as restless as he did under the sheets, and those vague images were colored in with stark clarity, right here, right now. He wasn’t thinking so much about propriety, or consequences. He forgot the responsibility resting at his knee, let it fall to the ground as his lips found Darius’s cheek and his hand clutched at the fabric guarding Darius’s thigh. All this became much easier guided by hormones. He would reflect, much later on, that adolescence was something of a drug.

It affected them both, regardless of how beyond his years Darius was in thought, because now wasn’t a time for thinking. He turned his head and felt how warm the lips were this time. His hands grasped Garen’s shirt and face, messily, not heeding any details because the sensation of a kiss was enough to eclipse all else. He would not remember that the shirt was thick and hard to grasp, or that Garen’s skin was flushed to burning; he would only remember that they had kissed. Garen leaned too hard and fell on top of him before kissing him again. Clumsy, but not weak. Garen’s fingers bit into his shoulder, holding him to the ground.

When Garen paused for breath, he saw the pain tugging at the corner of Darius’s lips, as he asked, “You been holding this back or something?”

Garen moved his hand a couple inches over, to the ground, and hardly waited to reply before leaning in again. “Maybe.”

At the end of the day they had hardly fished at all. Every time they cast their lines out, they would catch each other’s glances and go at it all over again. When Darius got up and said he had to leave, Garen pressed him up against a tree and kissed him for another five minutes. He dug his nails into his palms as he was walking away to force himself not to look back, since he might never have left if he did.

On the wagon home, as he faded off the high, he stared at the two silver trout lining the bottom of the basket. His lips felt bruised. He thought to himself that they were bad news for each other. Now more than ever.


	2. Chapter 2

He told Draven that there weren’t as many bites in winter. That was his excuse for not going back for another month. On the usual day of the week, he stared up at the ceiling of whatever shelter they had found that night and tried not to feel the imaginary shimmer of warmth on his lips. Eventually he would walk outside and find another sleeping vagabond to steal from, if only to distract himself.

When the month had passed and he arrived once more at the clearing, Garen was laying there beside the river, head resting aslant on a pillow of hands, asleep. Darius sat down beside him and carried out the usual routine. He looked over and the boy’s mouth was hanging open, saliva lining his lips and pooling at their corner. Something like this was supposed to be unappealing. Darius stared too long for that to be true.

Eventually he heard a groggy voice beside him. “I almost thought you were never coming back.”

“It’s the only place to fish.”

“What if there was another place, closer to Noxus? You would never return?”

“I would.”

“For me?”

He paused before answering. “We’re sworn enemies.”

“Enemies don’t kiss each other.” Garen sat up and pressed a kiss to Darius’s cheek, leaving there the moisture which lined his lips. “Besides, I’m not a soldier yet. I haven’t sworn anything.”

“You will be,” Darius shot back, turning his head but not to kiss him. “And what then? We try to forget this ever happened?”

“Who said anything about forgetting?” He pressed forward, placing his hands on either of Darius’s thighs, baiting a kiss with the proximity between them. He had no consideration for the fishing rod still in Darius’s hand; that pastime was no longer relevant to him.

Darius had spent the entire journey to the river thinking up protests for this very situation. All were abandoned - or rather, forgotten - as he remembered instead the addictive sensation that had got him here in the first place, and breached the gap to feel it again, just for a moment, just for an hour, just for a couple of years before Garen was of age to enlist.

Why a Demacian boy?

Darius had heard about love and lust, and he thought he understood the latter. It plagued him at night just as it did most others of his age and beyond, but it had never materialized around the form of a specific person - not until now. Not until the Demacian boy had decided to kiss him and confirm all of their subconscious suspicions about each other, irreversibly, and fill him up with complications he would do better without. 

* * *

In several more months they had learned how to balance their time more productively, and as they sat beside each other waiting for bites, just like they had in the old days, they felt the warmth of each other’s presence without the smitten need to lay immediate claim to it. Garen had been more guilty of this need, but as Darius continually returned to the river instead of disappearing altogether, the panic died down and left space for companionship. There was only so much one could learn from a person by occupying their lips; much more came of freeing them.

Nevertheless, they were trapped to that one bleak shore. What else did they have besides two crude fishing rods and their physical desires?

“You know something,” Garen said. “Next time I could bring fish from the Demacian market. Then we could spend our time here however we wanted, and you wouldn’t leave any lesser off for it.”

“I can’t accept Demacian produce.”

“It’s food, Darius. A universal substance. Some of the fish probably come from the same river.”

“Still.”

“You don’t seem to have a problem accepting Demacian affection.”

“That’s different.”

“Wouldn’t you rather kiss these Demacian lips than sit there staring blankly at the water for two hours?”

Darius didn’t answer, but his shoulders tensed and his jaw locked. Check and mate.

Since he refused to take up the offer, Garen pulled his line out of the water and rose from his seat. “Alright then, I’ll stare _with_ you.” And he sat down again just behind Darius, stretching his legs out on either side of him, wrapping his arms around a stiff, too-skinny stomach and resting his chin on Darius’s shoulder to look out at the same view.

This was a new level of intimacy. They had always faced each other as they kissed, never lingering after they broke apart, never remaining pressed together unless it was for that other purpose, since kisses were a signal of lust and embraces a signal of something different. At least Darius saw it that way, and the longer this went on, the more agitated he became. Soon enough his face was burning.

“You act like this is natural. Like there’s nothing wrong with it,” he said, retreating once again to his default argument, because it made sense when everything else didn’t. It narrowed things down into two simple terms: Noxian and Demacian.

“You must not realize that I’m also nervous,” Garen replied, and sure enough his heart was beating fast when Darius bothered to pay attention to it. Pitter-patter against his back.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Listen, you can dwell on our origins all you want, but it will not change them. I will not let the future plague the present. All it does is spoil our hearts, and I don’t want you to taste grief on my lips.”

“I don’t,” Darius said, remembering the taste of his lips.

“Then stop worrying me. Stop telling yourself it’s wrong when you know it feels right.”

But it didn’t feel right. It only felt as right as the length of a kiss, or the trail Garen’s fingers left on his skin, hot drops of wax which burned and cooled and crumbled, and left him feeling dirty.

“It makes me sick,” he said, clutching one of the hands at his waist. “To think that one day you won’t be here, and I’ll have to live for the rest of my life knowing I let you touch me so that you could cut down my countrymen with the same hands.”

Garen held out his hand, palm-up as though imagining the blood, and seemed to contemplate it just as attentively. There were callouses there from holding a sword. “Would it make a difference if I were still around later?”

The fact was that it didn’t matter, because he wouldn’t be around once he joined the military, once he was older and wise enough to realize the consequences of associating with a Noxian. If he was ever discovered, he would be labeled a traitor for the rest of his life, if not executed immediately.

“I don’t know,” Darius said, and he didn’t.

“Then are you done with me?”

Darius turned his body around and kissed him, holding his face close when they broke apart, and then his head sunk into Garen’s shoulder and his arms wrapped around to embrace him for the first time. “No.”

“Then promise me that you’ll stop dwelling on the future.”

“Promise me that you won’t leave without saying goodbye.”

“I promise.”

“Alright.” Darius hunched over, burying his face further into the warm fabric of Garen’s shirt, trying in vain to memorize the scent. “I promise.” 

* * *

It didn't become any easier not to dwell on the future. Most people, Demacians and Noxians alike, enlisted in the military at the age of eighteen, thenceforth pledging their lives and souls to the battlefield for a minimum of three or six years, respectively. That was the minimum, of course. Many went on to serve for at least another ten years, some for the remainders of their lives.

Darius didn't want that future, not for him or for Draven. But Draven had a sadistic streak, which was a surefire sign he would go wherever violence went, and enjoy it, too. Darius would slash the throats of pickpockets; Draven would break each of their limbs and leave them there, moaning helplessly, for whatever creature crawled out of the Noxian slums to claim them next. It was a different means to the same end.

There were a number of options available for citizens who weren't interested in fighting. One could enlist as an intelligence agent, or an armorer, or as part of the city guard. None of them sounded particularly appealing. Darius figured he would decide his role when the time came around.

For now, life was simple. Worry about the essentials. Get food and shelter and stay alive. Live day by day until time runs out.

He realized, suddenly, that he shouldn't have felt that way - like time was always running out. And yet he couldn't will himself to escape the influence.

When he arrived at the river there was a basket at Garen's side. The boy turned his head and smiled. "Got you something."

"I told you, I can't accept that."

"Sure you can," he replied, standing up as Darius approached to seize his chin and kiss him. He was sixteen now, and his frame was filling out with lean muscle. He had grown taller and more confident still, but youth remained on the features of his face. Round cheeks, button nose, eyes wide and honest.

"Have you ever thought that someone could follow us in here?" Darius interjected, voice harsh with paranoia.

"Oh, sure. Let's brandish our swords at each other first, to throw them off," Garen replied, impatient but not quite derisive, as he closed in again with fervent lips, both hands now finding purchase on Darius's jaw and the nape of his neck. He was behaving differently, recklessly, stepping so close that Darius had to step back to retain his balance. When he pulled back his eyes darted back and forth across Darius's face, the usual certainty displaced by what seemed to be a stirring in his heart. "No one has any reason to follow a nameless sixteen-year-old into the forest."

"You're a Crownguard."

"I'm not worth anything until I take up arms for Demacia."

"You're worth something to me."

A smile had only just crossed his lips before they crashed forward again in response, forcing Darius to open his and share the heat between them. All the sensitive nerves being sparked sent a familiar weakness through his limbs; he could not think except to think of how wonderful this boy was.

He felt his back against the tree on the bank, and Garen's hands on his waist, beneath his shirt, gripping possessively. "It's been almost two years," Garen said, his breath short. "I know you've thought of it."

"I've thought of it," Darius agreed, lost for any other words. He had thought of it quite often. At night, when he couldn't sleep, and every time he arrived at the riverbank. Then especially.

"And how do you feel about it?"

On impulse, Darius gripped the top of Garen's hair and pressed downwards. He regretted it almost instantly. _Too forward._ But Garen complied, hands sliding down Darius's legs as he sank to his knees, feeling their muscular curves and bends for maybe the first time. His subtle hesitance made it certain that he didn't know what he was doing. The care and interest with which he tugged at Darius's waistband ensured that he didn't mind trying.

The organ came free, and Garen gripped the base, pressing his lips flat to the underside. The sight of it made Darius forget every trouble he had ever experienced. And when Garen opened his mouth and slid the hot insides over his most sensitive skin, Darius might as well have forgotten his own name.

His head fell back against the bark, and he emitted a long, low sound less modest than he thought he had emitted in his entire life.

In several minutes Darius pushed him back onto the grass, and Garen breathed, “You can get inside me.”

“Wouldn’t that hurt?”

“It’s okay.” He trembled under the other’s touch, chest heaving when Darius pressed his thumb against the sensitive intersection of shaft and head. “I’ve… prepared.”

Darius kissed him for a long while, moving his hand at a pace so torturously slow that Garen felt himself on the edge before they even started. They met eyes, Garen short of breath, Darius only pretending to be in full control of himself. He palmed downward until his fingers met the orifice.

“Tell me what to do.” 

* * *

It became near impossible to fish after that. Darius ended up taking the contents of the baskets Garen brought because they always ran out of time. It tasted the same, of course, and after the first time became part of the routine quite quickly. Darius felt less strange eating it than he did letting Draven eat it, because he was still out of the know, and once a secret had been kept this long it felt even more treacherous to tell it.

They were naked on the riverbank, Darius lounged back in a half-sitting position with Garen's head on his stomach, drying off from a post-sex dip. His feathery brown hair, almost auburn in the sunlight, tickled Darius's skin as he ran his fingers through it, and tiny chilled droplets met his stomach as they flicked off. Garen was seventeen now, and had the young muscles of a warrior. His calloused hands had grown more precise, his jawline stronger, his lips less often drew out to a sloppy grin. What never changed, however - what still remained as bright and honest as when they were children - were his eyes.

"How's training?" Darius asked, because there was no point avoiding the subject; it was always on his mind. _Always,_ the time limit, ticking down to their last meeting, and the worst part was that he didn't know if it would be this meeting or the next, or if Garen would break his promise and simply fail to show up one day.

"The guardsmen tell me it's hopeless to keep trying," he said, not sounding in the least bit discouraged. "The ones who don't know I'm a Crownguard, anyways."

"Funny how that works."

"I'm glad for it. If no one was honest with me I wouldn't drive myself to improve."

"Are they just being shitheads, or are you actually struggling?"

"I wouldn't call it struggling. I just need more practice."

"Spar with me, then."

He turned his head to look up at Darius in surprise, lips parted, blue eyes gleaming in the sunlight, and Darius doubted for a moment his ability to throw a serious punch if it was headed in this boy's direction. Something like that was second nature to him, and here it was being reprogrammed in an instant. He couldn't have that. If nothing else, he needed to be in control of his ability to fight.

"Sure you can take me?" Garen asked, voice lilting just enough to get across the innuendo, and he was already getting up with a snicker in his throat by the time Darius reacted.

"Fuck off, you know I can."

They pulled on their trousers, and in Darius's pile of things was a dagger with a long black blade, the cloth wrapped around the hilt worn and fraying. The moment Garen saw him holding it, he shook his head. "No blades. I could hurt you."

"How can you become a soldier if you're not comfortable enough to wield a blade?"

He stiffened at that, knowing it was true; a skilled swordsman could hold his blade before breaking skin.

“Fine," Darius said, tossing the dagger aside. "But if I win, you owe me one. A swordfight."

"Alright." They stood across from each other, feet spread and ready to pounce. "If I win, you owe me a kiss."

"Don't I already give you plenty?"

"That doesn't mean they've lost their value."

He made it so hard to stay in the fighting mindset. He made it so hard to think of anything else, to want anything else, but him. And he probably wasn't even trying.

"You first," Darius said, and in a moment, Garen charged forward with his fist drawn back. All power, no style. Darius dodged beneath his fist and Garen followed him, punch after punch; he had nothing if not energy. But he was predictable, and Darius dived in-between fists to elbow him in the stomach, hook his arm up round Garen's neck, and pull him down to the ground. They landed atop one another, Darius quickly finding Garen's hands to hold them there on the ground beside his head.

There was no struggle, because Garen was already looking up at him with admiring eyes, breathing heavily, body and mind surrendered without qualms. His cheeks were flushed, and his hair disheveled. There was a nasty ache in Darius's side where Garen had managed to hit him.

What Darius thought in that moment was, 'I love you.'

He would never say it out loud.

"I was really looking forward to that kiss," Garen said, eyes not losing their unshakeable focus on him, which burned through him and ruined him completely, as it always did.

And Darius gave him his kiss anyways. He gave one on the lips and one on the jaw, and several on the neck - kisses greedier than he had left before, though he was regretfully careful not to leave a mark above the collar. He bit kisses into the gentle curves of his pecs, the sensitive pink nubs - which Garen's body arched up in response to, voice heaving and breaking - and the creases of his stomach. He sucked a wet trail of bruises down the curve to what made Garen loudest, and he dug his nails into Garen's hips, a warning not to draw attention to their forbidden clearing or they could both be killed. There was nothing more dangerous than listening to him gasp and swear under his breath, the future pride of Demacia, all dignity shredded to ribbons in a futile attempt to keep his voice to himself.

Soon enough he was quiet save for his breathing, and his cock had gone limp in Darius's mouth. There was a withered moan as Darius sat up. Garen looked even more helpless than he had after the fight, eyes half-closed, hands sprawled out above him without anything holding them down. He was gorgeous.

The western horizon was beginning to bleed out shades of orange and red. Time to leave. Another two weeks stolen from time that should have been theirs, only theirs. Darius felt that sick feeling in his stomach again, like some essential part of his system was being torn away from him, but Garen was still right there in front of him, breathing, looking up at him as though he had never seen a more perfect thing in his life.

"See you in two weeks," Darius said. Garen reached his hand out from where he lay, palm up, and when Darius took it he pulled Darius onto him for another kiss. Then he stayed there on the ground, lips pursed now that his breath was caught, not quite smiling.

"See you in two weeks," he said.

"You're going to stay here?"

"For a little while."

Darius pulled away, gathered his things, and stopped at the edge of the clearing to look back. It was an awful idea, yet he never learned. It only hurt more to see what he was walking away from.

Happiness existed in that clearing, and soon it would be empty. Soon there would be no proof that the Demacian boy had ever existed, or ever kissed him, except for the pain. Oh god, the pain. Like a jagged axe dragging through his chest.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated fic summary!
> 
> I'd like to thank everyone who has commented from the bottom of my heart. I appreciate your feedback more than you know. <3

The enlistment center was most popular in August, the month with the highest percentage of birthdays. Military service was a part of Noxian culture that most people were eager to jump into. It boosted one's status, situated them within a community, and most importantly, taught them to become stronger. On the road out towards the gates of Noxus, a line wrapped around the stone walls of the barracks and out into the street.

Darius should have been a part of that line around seven months ago, in the mid-January chill, but he had seven more years to decide his fate before they would force him into service, and a fourteen-year-old brother to take care of in the meantime. Now, walking past the line of jeering youths and half-baked adults who would soon be wielding blades for Noxus, his intestines might as well have jumped out of his mouth and strangled him, he felt so sick. He avoided their gazes and walked on.

The wagon-driver had grown much older in appearance these past ten years, and if someone tried to steal a fish basket from him now, Darius doubted he would be able to react with the same quickness. He had Darius with him half the time, now, which provided some security. But not for long. Darius didn't think he would have the heart to fish the river alone.

It felt different at the clearing already, if only because Darius was imagining the time to pass faster than usual. Every tick of blue sky that the sun sunk over served as proof of his own vastly decreasing importance in the boy's life.

But soon enough Garen arrived, with a hearty sigh and an explanation: "The enlistment center kept me longer than I expected."

His smile was a mile wide, as though there could have been no better place to take up his time. Not the river clearing or anywhere else. He was born to serve that godforsaken nation, and Darius hated it so much he could have taken the woven basket from Garen's back and torn it in two with his bare fingers.

Instead, he felt Garen's lips on his mouth and kissed back like his life depended on it. Because this could be the last time.

"Are you alright?" Garen chuckled through the kiss, leaning back to provide enough space for it.

"Does it seem like I am?"

"It seems like you still like me despite my newly sworn allegiance to the Demacian military."

"I'm surprised you even came today."

"I promised you," he said, gripping Darius's shirt to force a temporary distance between them, and observe what kind of expression he was dealing with. One of hatred, and anger, and very far buried fear. "I'm coming back, you know."

"You can't. It’s against-"

"I can and I will. It will be years before they ship me out to the battlefield. Until then I’m home in Demacia, living the same life I’ve always lived. Just with daily training sessions."

He smiled his stupidly optimistic smile and suddenly it was a lot harder for Darius to remain angry, even with the fear of abandonment creeping up his spine, stiffening his shoulders, and shooting a painful chill through his chest. Warmth spread from where Garen's hand gripped his shirt, and soon enough he was thawed.

He wasn't sure at what point he had convinced himself that Garen joining the military meant he would immediately rescind his biweekly visits. Perhaps when he had walked past one of the training grounds the other day and heard a group of recruits reciting the first three lines of the Noxian Military Charter.

Embrace death.

Inspire fear.

Forever strong.

They looked no older than enlistment age, and scrawnier than Draven. But their voices rang out with all the unconditional fervor of a seasoned battle squadron, and all the thoughtless passion of those who have given up their own lives for a cause.

He couldn't assume that things were the same in Demacia. He would tend toward assuming they were worse.

Even so, he looked at Garen and couldn't agree with himself. He couldn't agree that such a vibrant person had had their life sucked out of them by the tenets of war. He couldn't agree that someone so free, in both action and spirit, woke up every morning hearing those lines in his head, and believing them.

Nothing had made sense since he'd met Garen. Nothing he'd learned or felt or believed. He had resolved not to care about sense, and just accept that whatever had occurred here in the river clearing existed outside of the reality they both knew, but now reality was seeping in and he couldn't just ignore it. He couldn't ignore the stark terror he felt at having to leave this behind someday.

He almost broke right then and there, but he didn't. He leaned his head on Garen's shoulder and just rested there for a moment, trying to really believe that things here would last for a little longer. He would break much later, when he was least expecting it. When he was sitting at the table of a home he could legally call his own, going over war strategies, and he remembered everything all at once.

"You promised me, too," Garen said, wrapped around him. "That you'd stop dwelling on the future. So will you keep it?"

"I'm trying," Darius said. And he was. But even in those bright moments where he succeeded, he couldn't shake the feeling that whatever they did was insignificant. The war loomed over every square inch of Valoran, intangible and unstoppable.

He gripped Garen's shoulders, which were soon bare in the heat of the moment, and took his greatest pleasure in the moment where he could forget everything. The war, the clearing, and even the identity of whose shoulders he clawed. 

* * *

The war loomed heaviest at home in Noxus, but Darius had never noticed it because that's the way it had always been. Black clouds permeated the sky, wafting up constantly from the forges. Troops in training marched in small formations down the streets. One could look up from practically anywhere in the empire's borders and the first thing they would see was the great skull which housed Noxian High Command.

It was hard to imagine a Noxus without war. Perhaps that was why no one cared to end it.

Nevertheless, it was home, and not all parts of Noxus were black and sinister. The marketplace was wide and orderly; no one would be able to run a business otherwise, with thieves running amuck. The entertainment district kept its lights bright and its taverns loud. And to walk along the mountainside at sunset, with all the rooftops painted orange, and the tower looming high above - there was no other feeling like it. A feeling of empowerment, of majesty, of pride.

Noxian pride. At some place in his memory, Darius could feel the ghost of it being carried with him on the wagon. He would watch the great skull disappear but still feel it looming up beside him, inspiring an undefeatable confidence. When he was a child, and he still believed in everything he was told.

He was an outsider now. When the great skull loomed out of view, it was no longer beside him. All he could think of was the warmth of a body at his shoulder, and a smile in the summer sun.

Now he had lost that too. At the edge of the river, Garen was standing at attention in cheap soldier's garb. His eyes remained downcast, and his left hand rested lifelessly on the hilt of a sword. He didn't say anything. Perhaps he couldn't think of anything that would be right to say.

"Is this you saying goodbye?" Darius asked, feeling his throat turn drier with every word, but in his chest he felt nothing. He had known before coming. He had felt it somehow, in the heaviness of his limbs as he got up in the morning, in the tastelessness of the bread he'd forced down. Somehow, he had known.

Garen didn't answer outright. He was too charismatic for that. Too brilliant not to find words where there were none, and provide some iota of closure to a farewell that would never feel right, no matter how many generations of bloodshed lay between them.

He said, "I'm only cheating you by telling you not to think about our future. You were right about that. You always were."

"The reason you're changing your mind now is because you're cheating your fellow recruits, not me."

"I don't want it to end this way."

"But it will," Darius said, stepping forward. "Won't it?"

The heat beat down on them hatefully. Rain was a much better setting for a scene like this.

At Darius's belt was the dagger he had tried to use before. He drew it, knuckles white around the hilt. Whatever those bastards had done to Garen in the past two weeks couldn't be undone. Neither could their ten years here together. "You owe me one."

"Please don't make me do that."

"You've been training, haven't you? So there's nothing to worry about."

"There is, I'm only two weeks-"

He slashed to the right, and in an instant Garen's sword was drawn, proving that two weeks' worth of training _had_ done something for him. They grimaced at each other. Then they fought.

Each erratic fling of the dagger was met with a stumbling sidestep. Darius swung so that the wide silver of the blade was replaced with momentary glints of reflected sunlight. If he had paused long enough to think about that blade meeting skin, he wouldn’t have had the strength to keep swinging.

In this way it was not so much a fight as an assault and defense. When Garen’s back met the trees he threw up his sword and deflected the next swing with a flat shove. They found equal footing near the center of the clearing, and Garen noticed a tear in his sleeve.

This would not end through defensive means. He swung first this time - a tall arc over his shoulder - and Darius seemed to nod towards the tip of the blade as he stepped back. He raised his dagger to fling the sword aside just a moment too late.

His own strength and lack of balance sent him to the ground, and he looked up with blood coating his nose and cheek like warpaint. Garen dropped his blade instantly, and his focused expression melted into fear.

“I didn’t,” he uttered, seeming to cut himself off as he staggered to the ground. He yanked his shirt over his head and scrunched it into a ball of fabric to be pressed to the wound. “I didn’t mean to. I shouldn’t have fought you. I knew I shouldn’t…”

“It was fair. Don’t be so dramatic.”

“Your eye.” He pulled up the ball of fabric for a closer inspection, and blood streamed to Darius’s chin. “Is it…?”

“I don’t know.” He raised his fingers to the gore and winced. “It’s fine, it’s just my skin.”

“You’re bleeding so much.”

Darius yanked the shirt from him and pressed it to the left side of his face, looking up from the other side to see how Garen’s jaw slacked open blankly in shock of what he had done.

“I’m fine,” he repeated angrily, even as his face flared in agony. “I stumbled. It wasn’t your fault.”

“You have to get treatment. I’ll come with you to make sure-“

“Are you stupid?”

Garen became downcast then. For one moment he had lived in a world where he could love someone without being killed for it. Now, again, he remembered that this was his final farewell. _This._

“Then go,” he said. “Before it bleeds out.”

“It’s just a cut. It’ll heal.”

Garen took the sides of his head and kissed the wound through the ball of fabric, his lips torn in a sad smile. “I’ll never forgive myself.”

“For what? Giving me what I wanted?”

“Please go, Darius. For my sake.”

"You don't mind walking back shirtless?"

"It's a warm day. No one will notice."

No one, Darius thought, except for every young woman who passed by him on the street. Maybe one of them would be his wife someday.

He stood up with a scoff on his face, not that it was visible beneath the stream of red. And if it was it would be passed off as a symptom of the pain which numbed his cheek and brow, which was just intense enough to help him walk away without looking back. He didn't want that shameful look burned into his memory, nor the soldier's garb. He wanted to remember Garen as he was before the war seeped in. Cheeks rosy and innocent. A smile in the summer sun.

"Darius," Garen said, behind him. "Promise me you will live a good life."

"I'm not sure what you consider to be a good life. But if it makes you feel better, I promise."

If he had looked back he would have seen moisture pierce those gems of blue, and teeth curl into lips until they almost bled. Seeing that would have convinced him to follow Garen to the gates of Demacia, so they could ask his identity and shoot him down. That would have been a merciful end. 

* * *

He received treatment at the village before going home. When Draven saw him with the left side of his face all bandaged up, making his hair stick up nonsensically, the first thing he did was laugh. Then he asked if the mountain village was still sided with Noxus.

“It is,” Darius said. “They know we’d raze them if they ever turned against us.”

He sat down at the table. By this time they had saved up enough money to rent out a small abode in the meanest part of town. It was mostly stolen money, not that it made any difference to the landlord.

“Then what’s the deal with your face? Fall off the wagon or somethin’ stupid?”

The right thing to do was to agree or make up some other excuse. The right thing to do was to never speak of what happened in the clearing - not with anyone. Those memories were sacred and forbidden. He had kept his secret up until now.

But, at least in his current forlorn state, he could not see how it mattered. His own brother deserved to hear the truth, just once in his life. Or maybe it was that Darius didn’t have the will to get through this part alone.

“I’ve been meeting someone at the river,” he said.

“Ooooohh, a forbidden love, is it?” Draven responded cheerily, not actually expecting to hit the truth spot-on. More likely, Darius would meet someone like an illegal weapons’ dealer, an assassin, a leader of a new political force.

“A Demacian.”

“Oh.” Draven stopped sharpening his blade. “ _Oh._ That _is_ forbidden love.”

There was a pause. Darius took note of the invisible tension between them before it faded. Draven had never met a Demacian. Neither had most of Noxus, without promptly cutting them down. All they knew about the Demacians was that they were the enemy, that they had no freedom, that they were an idealized nation of pawns to be played at King Lightshield’s selfish will.

Garen had contradicted all of those assumptions, until today.

“So I’m gonna guess you got in a fight,” Draven said.

“He owed me one.”

“He?”

“He.”

“Huh. I wouldn’t have guessed.”

“Today he told me he wasn’t coming back.”

“So then,” Draven crossed his legs, slouching up against the wall where we sat. He’d made a corner for himself in the main room, where the floor and walls were lined with pelts of animals he’d caught and skinned on the outskirts of Noxus. After they had been through the tanner, of course.

Darius couldn’t understand Draven’s interest in the sport. Darius would catch animals for meat, but Draven seemed to do it for a different reason. He would toy with and torture them until they died. His actions were purposeful and theatric, as though he were putting on a show.

Even as he sat there in the corner of their miniature shack, nestled in fur with a signature self-assurance in his posture, one could tell that he had discovered some kind of taste for the finer things in life.

“Was the fight a result of or the cause of that untimely farewell?”

“You could say it was a result.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve been meeting for very long.”

“For nine years, Draven,” Darius said, and there was silence as it sunk in. His hand curled into a fist on the table. “Nine years, and I always knew what the outcome would be. Yet I still feel this way.”

“I… imagine you would.”

“I’m sorry I never told you.”

“I don’t blame you, what with the war that’s been raging for the last couple of centuries. But I can’t say I understand.”

“I really went to fish the river back then. It was a coincidence that someone showed up at the same time as me. And a miracle that it didn’t happen again, with someone else, during all those years. If someone had caught us I probably wouldn’t be here right now.”

“He a decent guy?”

“He’s…” Nothing came to mind. No words, anyways. No words would do Garen justice. Only images, and feelings. A smile in the summer sun, which wrenched his heart and made it whole at the same time. “Yeah.”

“Well, that’s all that matters to me. I know this goes without saying, but your secret’s safe with me ‘til the day I die.”

“You aren’t gonna tell me how stupid I am?”

“I haven’t been in love myself, but I’ve heard how it is. You’re not to blame for acting stupid. Lemme guess that if you’d been caught, you'd have thrown yourself face-first into his sword and died with no regrets, just so he could go on and live his life as a loyal Demacian.”

Darius didn’t answer, but he could imagine himself doing it.

“Anyways,” Draven continued, taking on a slightly more serious tone. “I think it’s safe to say that we probably shouldn’t talk about this again, so if you have anything else to say, let it out now. Leave your love story behind so you can move on. As far as our world knows, there’s only one place Noxians and Demacians will ever meet. The battlefield.”

The image of Garen in soldier's’ garb appeared in his mind, and this time he didn’t try to bury it. The cheap fabric molded into metal links, then gilded plates. His posture relaxed and emanated confidence. His sword was nicked with chinks and splashed with blood. He would survive the battlefield.

“You’re right,” Darius said, standing. Draven took his resolute tone to mean that he was ready to move on.

In his mind, Garen turned and looked at him, blue eyes hard with experience, and readied his sword to fight. 

* * *

The enlistment center was a stiff and unwelcoming place. Before him was a desk with the red flag of Noxus draped across its front. Behind him was the never-ending line of new recruits, many of them haughty and impatient with youth. Thankfully the line had moved quickly. The disgruntled soldier behind the desk tapped the sheet of names in front of her, reciting in monotone, “Sign your full name, birthdate, and the province you live in. Your training begins here tomorrow, 8 A.M. sharp. All recruits start here at the central garrison. After the first week you’ll be reassigned to the station in your province.”

Just beside them was a training yard with pairs of soldiers drilling sword maneuvers. There were about a dozen pairs - clearly youths - and room for more. The drills looked simple enough.

“I might as well join in today,” Darius said, signing.

“I’m done arguing with you idiots, so suit yourself. Just don’t blame me when the drill sergeant gets pissed off and decides to kill you as an example.”

She handed him a small gray badge shaped in the emblem of Noxus, which he hesitantly pinned onto his shirt. He had always thought these badges looked tacky, especially since most everyone had one. But they would want him to wear it in the garrison, unadorned to signal his status as a recruit.

He crossed the boundary of the training yard and watched for a moment from the sidelines. The drill sergeant was standing at one corner with her arms crossed, flaming red hair tied into a tight ponytail. She had a scar which stole a patch of hair from above her right ear and stretched just past the bottom corner of her right eye. The skin was crumpled and gauzy, as though it had been burned.

She didn’t notice him until he picked up a wooden sword from a pile in the grass and stood beside the last pair of recruits, poised to copy their movements. He hadn’t been through one swing before she was beside him. “Who are you?”

“I just enlisted-”

“And they didn’t tell you to come tomorrow?”

He paused just long enough to prove that he was not as confident as he had felt a minute ago. Not in the presence of this soldier, this woman who bled authority like she had been born a sergeant, who had survived real battles and had the scars to prove it. To her, he was a boy who knew nothing.

“I didn’t want to waste another day at home,” he said.

“So you decided to waste my time instead?”

She picked up a wooden sword and stood in front of him. By this time they had drawn the attention of most of the other recruits, who were standing with their swords crossed but not actually moving. Darius felt his heart rate rising.

“Fight me,” she said, sword hanging comfortably at her side. “Prove that you’re not wasting my time.”

He was hesitant to swing. When he did, she ducked under the wooden blade and elbowed him hard in the stomach. Something hit the back of his legs, the world tipped, and he hit the ground like a rock. He felt like he was going to throw up. She rested the tip of her blade on his chest, and asked, “What is an army without order?”

He coughed out a breath, watching her cold expression without blinking. She did not wait for an answer.

“A bunch of idiots with sharp objects, running around to die. You’re expected tomorrow morning at 8 A.M. No sooner, no later. When High Command deems you relevant enough to sit amongst them, you can make your own rules. Until then, you are useless to us without orders. Go home.”

She pulled back her blade and started walking along the line of recruits. By the time Darius looked up, not a single eye was on him. They had returned to their drills without a word from her.

This was the influence of power. It was chilling, and… incredible.

He stood up, gripping his stomach, and trudged home at a slow enough pace to keep its contents down. 

* * *

The following morning was covered in mist. He found the rest of the recruits in the huge central courtyard of the garrison, many of them gathered in cliques, and some, like him, fresh and nervous and alone. On the far end of the courtyard was a raised stone platform. The drill sergeant from yesterday emerged from a tower doorway, followed by nine other instructors, and walked to the center of the platform.

Her voice required no artificial amplification. It echoed against the walls of the courtyard and struck all of their attention instantly. “This is your first task. Form into ten lines.” As she spoke, people were already moving. “The person in the front of each line will be team captain for today. Anyone who is not in line at the count of three will run laps until their legs give out.” At this point, the newer recruits were still looking around in bewilderment, only the quicker ones falling into lines where they formed. Darius found his place at the end of one. “One… Two… Three.”

She stopped pacing and swiveled to attention at the center of the platform. There were squabbles at the front of several lines; the weak were pushed to the ground at the last second to make way for stronger team captains. The defeated rose to their feet and started jogging to the perimeter of the courtyard. Slower recruits who hadn’t gotten in line in time either followed suit or ducked into line anyways. The lines were jagged and unevenly spaced, but they were lines, and there were ten of them in a matter of three seconds.

“There are three phrases known by every Noxian. What are they?”

“Embrace death! Inspire fear! Forever strong!” the courtyard roared. Darius was left out only by surprise.

“This is the mantra you carry with you into battle. War is as much a test of mental fortitude as it is of physical skill. You will split your enemies in half and be bathed in their intestines. You will find your friends with mortal wounds and missing limbs, begging you to put them out of their misery. You will not be fazed, because only the weak face death. The strong carry on unfaltering. It is your choice, starting today, whether you will bring glory to Noxus or be cut down by Demacian scum.”

She walked to the edge of the platform, the other nine instructors following so that there was one in front of each line. She continued, “The drill sergeant in front of you will lead you to your training yard. Every one of us has been granted the authority to kill. Act carefully.”

At that point the lines on either edge began to move, following their respective drill sergeants through stone archways to training yards on different sides of the garrison. Darius’s line ended up in a grass square similar to the one he’d seen yesterday, except that it was in a back area instead of adjacent to the street. The line broke to fill the space, and in front of them stood a short man with an eyepatch, a brown ponytail, and a frazzled goatee.

He had a rough voice, as though he’d had one too many drinks without a glass of water inbetween.

“My name is Rory Alfarri, and as your drill sergeant I ask for two things. One, don’t ask me questions. My directions are clear, so if you’re dumb enough to get confused, look around you and take a fuckin’ educated guess. Two, no bitching. If you can’t make it through today you can’t make it through war. I don’t take excuses. The moment you decide you can’t keep up, I send you home.” He directed a sneer across the crowd which gave Darius the impression he hadn’t actually _seen_ a single face. “Now, we’re starting with a hand-to-hand tournament. If you didn’t stretch before coming, you’re an idiot. If you haven’t been working out and training, you’re an idiot. Everyone form a ring and get two people in the center.”

Darius backed up along with everyone else. Even the most arrogant of the group could calculate that going first meant fighting the longest, which came with a very high chance of losing overall. This little tournament wasn’t designed to be fair. In fact, it seemed like a horrible candidate for a training exercise, so why-

Someone shoved his shoulder and he stumbled into the center of the ring. On the ground in front of him fell a shaking frame of a man, also pushed in, who looked up at him with helpless eyes. Like a rabbit in a trap.

They watched each other for a moment. There had been no announcement, but Rory Alfarri drilled into them with an impatient stare.

Darius reminded himself that this tournament wasn’t designed to be fair, and he threw his fist forward to meet the man’s face unresisted. The man fell and struggled to get up. He threw a punch from the ground; Darius caught his wrist and hesitated long enough to feel him rattling in his skin, terrified and obviously not prepared for this - not in his first week, maybe even his first day.

But Darius was prepared. He had spent eighteen years on the streets, preparing for this. Rory was there, analyzing him for any perceivable weakness. And more than that, the battlefield lay in his future. What would he do if he had the enemy caught in a situation like this?

He pulled the arm to hear a crack and a wail of agony. The man writhed on the ground. On the battlefield there would be no time for pity. A moment of hesitation could cost him his life.

Here, he couldn’t help but hear the pain in that voice. He couldn’t help but imagine Garen there, helping the man, battered but uninjured, to his feet. _“You’d better train harder. I could have broken your arm.”_

Rory grasped the back of the man’s shirt and lugged him carelessly out of the ring, shouting, “Next!”

The next victim was a girl with average stature, and she hit _hard,_ as he discovered from a punch that slid past his block and hit his shoulder. They traded blows back and forth for a minute, until Darius landed a particularly shocking uppercut and ended it there with a flurry of blows. She passed out on her back and was promptly dragged out.

From there onward it was a steady downward spiral of pain and exhaustion. Every hit they landed made him sorer; every hit _he_ landed drained his strength, until he couldn’t contest the full body weight of the next brute to pin him on the ground and start throwing punches. He remembered grasping the man’s shirt in an attempt to pull him off, and then nothing.

He came to when something smacked the side of his head. Rory was walking past him, down a short line of unconscious recruits, attempting to wake each of them with a slap, kick, or otherwise debilitating action. “Everyone to the central courtyard. Run two laps, then come back here and find a partner.”

Most of them were able to stand up. Darius was able to, but every step strained his abdomen so that he felt like he was being split in two. He stopped for a moment, grasping his stomach, and when he looked up the yard was mostly clear. Rory stood in front of him, sneering emptily. “You take a few punches and now you can’t walk? Pathetic. Go home.”

His mouth formed one vowel of a protest before it deteriorated into a grimace and a groan.

A few punches? He had taken on eight people before falling. That was almost half the group. And that was pathetic?

What about the pile of bones who had been thrown in against him first? Wasn’t _that_ pathetic?!

Rory had left him there, and Darius didn’t plan on following even if he believed he could run. He had been slighted. Stuck into an unwinnable situation and then condemned for losing.

Once he reached the street he straightened his back and clenched his fists through the pain. A visibly disabled citizen stood very little chance of reaching home with all of himself and his belongings intact.

And as the pain creeped up his spine, as he was split in two over and over again without breaking stride, he realized his flaw. He realized what the red-haired drill sergeant had meant by her speech. That every person with the will to live would persevere if they _had_ to, but the strong would always persevere. The strong would fight when their limbs were gone and their muscles torn. They would defeat not eight of their adversaries but all of them. They would get up and run as many laps were called for, no matter how much it hurt.

The strong would show themselves not on the battlefield, but here in training, when they were young and unpracticed. And the strong would be the ones to survive the war. 

* * *

It was not easy to be strong. He would start the day already covered in aches and bruises, knowing that the hours ahead held countless more, and in those hours hesitation was not an option. Hesitation was weakness. It was the tremble of his arms telling him he couldn’t push himself up again. It was the searing flame of a blow, peeling his skin off pore by pore. It was the rapid stutter of his heart, striking in him the fear that he couldn’t last any longer.

Hesitation was not an option. He could push himself up if he believed. He could take a thousand blows and still remain standing. He could keep going, on and on and on, and his heart would find a way to sustain him, because now _he_ was in control.

Right up until the moment where the next step he took tumbled up to meet him and turned the world black.

The next day was another opportunity to grow stronger. In the next tournament he would fight first and be the last one standing. He would keep throwing his fists until they were bloody and numb. He would will his abused body to move, to parry, to lunge, to keep maneuvering around the enemy, right up until the moment where his muscles lagged one step behind his brain and a hit came towards him and turned the world black.

On the last day he waited for the red-haired drill sergeant to start counting. On one he veered out of his place in line and straight into the gut of the boy in front, elbow first. On two a girl shoved in from the other side, digging her nails into bloody welts on his skin, and he clawed her face with his hand in an attempt to push her off. On three, something pelted his lower back and seemed to split him in two, but he bent his knees and dug his feet into the ground and swung his arm with everything he had. Her cry of agony as she hit the floor broke the oncoming silence. She gripped her face at the eyes, and blood streamed.

The drill sergeants looked on without emotion. Darius looked through the pain slicing his back and the sores covering his skin and the spasms wracking his muscles to meet eyes with her - the woman who had been through war and had the scars to prove it, who viewed him as less than nothing - and for one moment she acknowledged him. Then she looked up and addressed all of them.

“There are three phrases known by every Noxian. What are they?”

“Embrace death! Inspire fear! Forever strong!” they answered, and this time Darius roared so loudly that he couldn’t hear anyone but himself. His throat burned. It didn’t matter.

As she spoke on, the words coursed through him like fire. He saw himself at the front of an army, leading the charge with an upraised battle axe. He slaughtered the Demacians like cattle. Their blood covered him and made him stronger. He was a Noxian.

And without fear to drag him down, without attachments and petty emotions, he would be the strongest of them all.


	4. Chapter 4

Bird calls pierced the air above. Grass rustled beneath his feet - a mistake. He never could be as stealthy as the others. Not since they had placed metal in his hands and strapped it to his shoulders, making him feel invincible with or without the element of surprise.

But sometimes it wasn’t a matter of surviving. When it was a matter of catching and killing, such an arrogant mindset would only slow him down. Beside him, a haughty huff and a flash of red hair was quick to remind him of that. She dashed ahead of him without disturbing a single leaf. After a quick, calming breath, he followed.

There were four Demacian scouts, and if any one of them escaped, it meant trouble for Noxus. It also meant a quick and fatal punishment for Darius and the rest of them. He could not misstep here. He had much further to go before he would be satisfied with his impact on the war, and on Valoran. His future contribution to this campaign was worth so much more than the lives of four worthless Demacians.

With his eyes on the future, he kept running. He heard a whizz of metal and an unseemly squelch, and several paces ahead stepped over the dying body of one of them, sliced clean at the throat by Katarina’s blade. Three left, then.

“They’ve split,” she said, appearing suddenly beside him. “Me left, Talon right, you go straight ahead. Don’t count on Jericho catching up to us, with that leg. I dunno why they even let him on this company.”

“His sense of humor,” Darius jibed. The guy hadn’t said a word since he’d appeared at camp a week ago.

Katarina snorted. “Don’t fuck this up, bad boy.”

Then she was gone. He gripped his axe and opened his mind to the world in front of him, trying to see more in the patterns of dirt and arrangements of trees. Trying to remember all that he’d learned in scouting training, since this was where it would count the most.

A broken branch. He adjusted his angle slightly and sprinted on. There was the scout - a speck in the distance, disappearing behind a bush and a large tree. Darius could catch him by cutting the corner. He gripped his axe, ready to swing, already hearing the crunch of bone.

And around the corner was an open field, filled with archers. Dozens of them, aimed in three different directions. From another corner of the field, Katarina glanced at him guardedly. They had been set up. But there was no turning back - not without completing the mission. Talon, a hooded figure on the opposite end, stared ahead defiantly.

The archers held their aim. An armor-clad young woman emerged from the formation, visible to all three of them, but she spoke to Darius. “Come with us, and we’ll spare your lives. In fact, we’ll treat you much better than your Noxian superiors would, after letting our scouts go like that.”

“I hope you die choking on your own intestines,” he replied.

“I see. A shame,” she uttered, raising her arm in a commanding gesture. Darius ducked behind the tree just as the first arrow whizzed past him. Then he grabbed the gas grenade from his belt - compliments of the crazy chemist at camp - threw it out into the field, and charged.

The smoke burned his skin and throat, but it was familiar, and therefore bearable. They had run countless drills through this smoke to “immunize” themselves, so to speak. He would feel the sting of it for hours to come, but right now he could hardly feel it. Right now he felt the arch of his weapon as it buried itself in a fragile body. He felt the warm spatter of blood, and the thrill of power.

He cut down three of them before the smoke started to clear, and behind it the archers readied their aim again. He lifted the body at his feet and half a dozen arrows implanted themselves in its lifeless chest. It would take them two seconds to ready the next arrow. That wasn’t enough time to reach them.

“No!” he screamed, though it didn’t come out as a word so much as an incoherent battlecry. He charged forward, diving to the side as they released their arrows, but one hit his arm and broke off painfully against the ground. He scrambled to his feet, and his enemies scrambled backwards. Behind them was another line of archers, who released their arrows and all three hit their mark.

Right shoulder, right rib, left thigh. Nothing fatal. He could still fight. He could still-

When he tried to stand, his leg buckled beneath him. He looked up and saw Katarina being sliced out of the sky. Another body hit the dust ahead of him - Talon. This wasn’t right. Somewhere they had miscalculated. Somewhere, their strength had failed them.

He willed himself again to stand up, but the leg beneath him quivered and fell. The archers readied their arrows… and then looked up and scattered in terror. One of them was caught by the arm - by a shimmering green entity, swallowing the slab of muscle through a gleaming black beak. A _crow_.

The archer’s scream cut through the chaos and curdled blood. More crows flew out from the murk, catching archers by their shirts and hands and even their heads. Behind them appeared another, larger figure. Its body was humanoid, but out from its shoulders stretched a pair of ghastly black wings. And its head was that of an enormous, red-eyed, cawing crow.

The creature looked straight at Darius, and he expected it to come for him next. Instead, its feathers pulled back from its warped black skin, its beak melted into lips, and its wings contracted into small, bony shoulder blades. From within the hellish creature emerged Jericho Swain, an ebony cane warping into existence at his right side, and a bird on his shoulder.

As the dust settled, so did silence, and Darius realized that not a single Demacian had been left alive in that field.

“You…” he began to say, angrily, though his voice came out weak and broken. Since the battle had ended, he was beginning to feel with stark clarity where the four arrows pierced through skin and muscle and dug into their flesh venues with sharp points.

“Why didn’t you come sooner?”

He didn’t expect Jericho to answer him. He spoke because he was angry - mostly at himself - for being shown up by this silent simulacrum of a man.

But Jericho did answer him, in a deep and grating voice, void of emotion. “Their formation was efficient. Had I not allowed them to engage you, my attack would have been much less effective, and made it possible for some to escape.

“Had you communicated with us  from the beginning, we would have been able to engage them without sustaining so many unnecessary injuries.”

“I wouldn’t have expected you, Darius, to care so much about a couple of measly arrows.” Jericho narrowed his eyes into two blood-red slits. “Or is it that you’re concerned for your teammates, despite how desperately you try to hide any traces of such an interest at camp?”

_“What?”_

Jericho turned his head as though to observe the scene, and then began to saunter off. “I will return to camp and direct the healers to your location. They should arrive here in time to save your friends. _If_ you’re lucky.”

Darius watched him disappear past the trees, stunned and in pain. He didn’t have the energy to argue with an accusation he knew to be true. Not while his allies… his _friends_ , were gasping for breath somewhere in the field of bodies around him. Not after he had witnessed whom he had assumed to be the weakest link transform into a demon and singlehandedly take down an entire squadron of skilled soldiers as though it were a child’s game.

He lay back on the dirt and smelled the blood in the air, cursing himself for his weakness, and his stupidity. How was it that Jericho had obtained such a power and kept it all to himself? How was it that he could play his own teammates and feel no remorse?

He was strong. Strong enough to view the board which war took place on. Strong enough to arrange the pieces in a winning formation, despite which ones would be lost along the way. Strong enough to carry out the final move himself, and see his campaign to the end, for better or worse.

After all that had happened to him, Darius still hadn’t learned his lesson. There was no place for attachments in this war-torn world. They would be severed and make him weaker. Hiding his emotions was not the same as dispelling them, and it seemed that he had done an abysmal job at both.

* * *

Katarina awoke about three hours later and sat up in her cot, midriff wrapped in bandages. They were stained red at the left side. She gripped the back of her neck and tilted her head around, movements slow and stiff. She stared at the Recuperation Tent’s third occupant for a length of time, and then looked at Darius. “You alright?”

The question bothered him. Had she not seen Jericho’s transformation? Wasn’t the outcome of the mission more important than whether or not _he_ was alright?

He grunted, and said, “The bodies of the three remaining scouts were found. Jericho took care of everything.”

She paused for a moment, but didn’t press her original question any further. “Jericho?”

“Seems like all of us were wrong about him.”

The door flap opened, and a soldier stepped partway into the tent. “Urgent meeting. The captain said he needs you there if you can stand.”

“I’ll be there,” Darius said, before bothering to see if he _could_ stand.

“You sure? Your leg-”

“Worry about yourself, Katarina,” he interjected firmly, but without malice. The two of them got along well because they could speak to each other this way. As the soldier left, Darius stepped down from his cot, buckled for a moment, and then moved forward. His leg ached, but that was inconsequential. He could walk.

 _Her_ face, however, grimaced in pain as she tried to stand. He wrapped his arm around her waist, careful to grip gently, and they walked together.

Rory Alfarri stood at the head of the table in the Command Tent. Since Darius’s first week of recruit training, Rory had been moved from the position of Drill Sergeant to Captain of the fabled First Company. They were a small squadron composed of the top recruits from each sector of Noxus. The total number of recruits in any given year was so large that less than one percent of them got into the First Company; the rest were assigned to other companies according to their skillsets and combat styles.

Atop the table was a map held down at the corners by small daggers. Around the table stood the rest of the First Company, minus Talon, who lay incapacitated in the Recuperation Tent. All of them were young, inexperienced, and overflowing with a confidence that would either win them the war or prematurely cost them their lives.

The tent was quiet save for small conversations between soldiers, and Rory stood with his hands braced on the edge of the table, relaxed yet in control. When Darius and Katarina entered, he glanced at them briefly before standing up straight. “Everyone of any importance is here, so let’s begin. Turns out that one of the scouts lived to tell their tale. Fortunately for the squad I sent out,” he explained, nodding his head toward the two of them. Jericho stood in another corner, silent and subtle as he always was. “It wasn’t one of the ones I sent you to kill. There’s a fifth scout who we didn’t detect earlier, whose tracks were found on the south side of camp. They took the military plans entrusted to us by the Sixth Battalion. Could one of you geniuses explain what this means so I don’t have to?”

A rosy voice pervaded the tent after hardly a second of silence. Its owner was Emilia LeBlanc, an enchantress of exceptional skill and preternatural charisma. She stood close to Rory in a revealing black robe. “It means that the Demacians know our politics. I propose that we find out theirs, and outplay them.”

“The rest of you, thoughts?” Rory said, providing no indication of his own opinion on the matter.

“We should take back what’s ours,” Katarina answered. “Follow the tracks to their camp and steal the plans before anyone gets a thorough look at them. Or replace them with minor changes, and use that to our advantage.”

“Those are nice ideas, but they’re half-baked and far too optimistic,” Jericho interjected. All the attention in the room directed to him. Darius could have sworn that he left a moment of silence on purpose, to emphasize just how important his word was since he hadn’t spoken at a meeting before. “By now at least half their camp has seen the plans. They’ve been transcribed and sent out to other camps, or are currently in the process of doing so. A dozen other sections of our military need to re-strategize, and we’re responsible for it. The only way to remedy this situation is to make up for our mistake by sending an even bigger message. We destroy their camp and all camps that they’re in contact with. Show them that they cannot take from Noxus without losing much more of their own.”

“Supposing that we have the power to carry that out,” Emilia responded tactfully. “What will we tell our own?”

“The truth. That we made a mistake, and they need to re-strategize. But that we have also eliminated a significant portion of Demacian troops and morale, opening up any number of new paths which have the potential to further advance our campaign.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Katarina said. “The First Company is small enough to fit in this tent, and you expect us to take out multiple camps of hundreds? We’re designed for stealth missions and strategy, not for you to stroke your ego with a suicidal display of power.”

“You forget that we are an elite force, Katarina,” Swain responded. “Or do you feel that you being selected out of many thousands of good soldiers was a mistake?”

Her arm tensed around Darius’s shoulder, pinching his skin, but she held her tongue.

“Jericho seems to have the most thorough understanding of this situation,” Rory declared, though he still sounded as unimpressed as he did always did. “So let’s talk about his plan. We follow the tracks. We are faced with hundreds of soldiers trained just as well as yourselves, who will slaughter us if we charge in head-on. The first thing we need to do is even the odds. Assassinate outliers, and find ways to divide their forces so we don’t have to face all of them at once. Our chemist can draw a line of fire through their camp. Maybe Emilia can create a couple clones of herself to lead them astray.”

“It would be my pleasure.”

“We also need to find out where the other camps are,” Rory continued. “Darius, I see that you can walk, but I don’t want you out there fighting to die. So your job will be to set up a small base near their camp and interrogate the hostages we bring back.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re the only one here, other than me, who’s been through the Prisoner Treatment. And I’ve interrogated plenty of people, so now it’s your turn.”

He nodded, but his stomach twisted just at the mention of the treatment.

“The longer we sit here, the more the plans spread, so we’ll continue this discussion along the way. Prepare to march and meet back here in five minutes. Dismissed.”

“What about me?” Katarina asked, as the others shuffled out of the tent, and Rory paused to acknowledge her.

“You stay here and recover. If we’re not back by dawn, it means we failed - in which case you burn the camp, take Talon, and get the news to High Command.”

“Then I’ll be leaving at dawn. With all due respect, Captain, I think it would be worthwhile to consider a safer plan. It doesn’t matter how strong we are as individuals; we’re outnumbered ten-to-one and haven’t-”

“It seems you have a flawed understanding of where Noxus gets its power. We believe in our own strength. And if you don’t believe that you can take down ten soldiers, then I have to doubt your placement in this company as well.”

Despite his sharp green eyes and scolding tone of voice, he brushed past her without a second thought, and they were left to the stares of those who remained in the tent. Katarina’s face was red and her nails digging in painfully.

“Let’s go,” Darius said, guiding their way out and towards the Recuperation Tent. She was silent for about a minute before her voice came out, grim and grating with anger.

“You’re all going to die.”

“We have a chance if all goes according to plan.”

“And you’re willing to risk everything for that small chance? What kind of plan is it if we all accept it just because the quiet guy speaks out for the first time? He’s trying to gain a reputation just by proposing something big all of a sudden, but he’s throwing away everyone’s lives.”

“You haven’t seen what he can do in battle.”

“Oh, really? He can’t even walk without a stick.”

“He turned into a monster, Katarina. Crows flew out of his body and chased them all down at once. They tore off whole limbs. They killed everyone, and then he turned back into himself and spoke to me as though nothing of note had happened. In the meantime, all three of us were bleeding on the ground.”

“That’s not possible,” she said angrily, looking up at him. “And even if it was, it only proves my point. He’ll fight them when it’s convenient and leave us to die. That’s not any way to win a battle.”

“And why isn’t it? The objective is more important than anything.”

She let go of him and stumbled out of his grasp, holding onto her side as she glared at him. “I’m glad to know you feel that way. I’m very quickly finding out who I can trust, and who would rather advance themselves than the group as a whole. Good luck, Darius.”

The final statement was tainted with a sarcastic flair, and after it, she shuffled off the rest of the way herself.

Darius walked to his tent and removed his shirt, which was sticky with blood and sweat, to replace it with new linen underarmor. Skin that was not covered with bandages was covered with scars, and most of them were not from battle. They were from the dungeons of his own nation, where he had spent one week as an honorary prisoner of war. They didn’t tell the torturers who were real prisoners and who were soldiers going through the Treatment. Darius doubted that it would make any difference even if they did.

He remembered their smiles and laughs. He remembered how they talked to him, as though they were old friends having a good time, as they prodded him with electrified sticks, carved shapes into his skin, and explored his throat with heated forks. Just enough to maim him mentally but not physically. Just close enough for the heat to sear his mind with terror; just deep enough to shallow his breathing to short gasps; just painful enough that the pain would stick to his skin forever, and make any pain thereafter feel like nothing more than an added itch. They were very skilled at what they did.

At the end of his recruit training, they had told him that anyone hoping to rise above basic infantry ranks - commonly known as fodder - was required to make it through the Prisoner Treatment, since anyone trusted in High Command needed the strength of will not to spill information under any circumstances. Most held off on the Treatment until they were in line for promotion. Darius had demanded to go through it immediately.

He pulled on his leather armor and headed for the weapons tent, knowing with stark clarity which instruments would do the job, and exactly how they would do it.

* * *

Blood spattered across the wall of the tent. The hostage sat, visibly quivering, with his arms and legs tied to the chair in the center of the tent. The skin of his forearm was gone, and his face bruised to bleeding. At some point, the torturer had to judge whether the subject knew something or they didn’t, and this man was a coward. He would have spoken by now if he knew.

It wasn’t an entirely emotionless affair. Sometimes Darius felt the pain the same as they did. He felt the knife slicing his skin, and the skin peeling away, and the red numbness of cold air finding bone. He felt it and his stomach twisted, but his consciousness told him that pain was only a state of mind. Then it became bearable. And he heard their wails and considered them weak.

Another one arrived as he slit the man’s throat, and was shoved carelessly onto the ground at the front of the tent. Darius turned around to scold the deliverer for not saying something first, and his lungs seemed to collapse. The subject was on his knees with hands bound, head lowered from the force of his fall, brown hair feathered and sloppy. He raised his head to reveal a face covered with dirt and blood and brimming with obstinate rage. When he saw Darius, his blue eyes faltered and regained their tenderness. His wide jaw slackened and stayed.

“Anything yet?” the Noxian soldier asked.

Speaking steadily then was one of the hardest things Darius had ever tried to do. He swallowed, wet his lips, and settled for a shake of his head.

“Keep at it. Everything’s going smoothly so far, aside from the entire camp getting set on fire.”

The soldier left. Garen’s eyes darted to the man in the center of the tent; he saw the bloodied neck and realized it was a corpse. They were alone.

“Don’t make them suspicious of you,” he said. “Do your job. I can take the pain.”

Darius stared for a long while before turning to him, knuckles white around the knife in his hand.


	5. Chapter 5

All those years ago at the river, an unlikely accident like this had ruined both of their lives; now it would all over again. Out of all the Demacian camps in Valoran, Garen had to be a part of this one.

The right thing for Darius to do was to bury his emotions and treat Garen as all the other hostages had been treated. This was something familiar to him, something he had practiced every day since basic training, whenever others challenged him or his body told him he couldn’t handle any more. It was strength.

Yet somehow, all of it crumbled in the presence of this stubborn, beaten, clumsy, stupid Demacian. This enemy. The ghost of his fingers ran beneath Darius’s shirt, caressed his neck, touched his lips. And he couldn’t find - couldn’t even envisage - the will to take Garen’s life here and now, where it should have been taken, and end these idealistic imaginings before they could damage him more than they already had.

“Do you know anything about the Noxian plans that were stolen?”

“Nothing. They held a meeting but I wasn’t a part of it.”

“Then leave,” Darius said, moving to unbind him. “Get as far away as you can. Back to Demacia. Don’t come back.”

“You can’t expect me to leave my comrades to die.”

“You were captured and barely escaped with your life. Isn’t that a good enough excuse?”

“It would be better if you did as I asked, and kept me here.” He yanked his hands away from Darius, preventing access to the rope around his wrists. “I cannot flee knowing that I didn’t do all I could. And if I went back there, it would only endanger you. So interrogate me properly. Or do you not have the strength?”

Darius grimaced, and Garen contested him with a look of steadfast certainty. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Garen was the victim here, yet he faced his own fate with absolute control. He wasn’t afraid to die to the boy he once loved.

But Darius was afraid to kill him.

The door flap opened and beneath it stood a different Noxian soldier, lugging a body by his side. “I grabbed one for you, but he started squirming along the way, so I accidentally knocked him out. Should I kill him?”

“No,” Darius muttered, glad that he hadn’t finished undoing Garen’s bonds. “Just tie him to the tree outside.”

“Can do,” the soldier replied blithely, but he let the body fall against his leg and didn’t move. “I’ve been curious since I heard you made it through the Prisoner Treatment. Mind if I watch for a minute?”

“I’d prefer if you didn’t.”

“Ah, c’mon. I just want to hear him scream a little. He looks so defeated already. He’s not even struggling, and that’s no fun.” The soldier crossed him arms, sporting a sly smile, and Darius had to wonder if he had heard part of their conversation from outside. It seemed unlikely; most Noxians would react to any hint of betrayal with a swift and unheralded assault. Darius considered attacking him and burning him with the rest of the bodies.

But the look that Garen gave him - unbeknownst to the Noxian soldier behind him - was so ferocious that Darius lost his own train of thought and immediately re-adopted the persona that was expected of him. The persona that Garen expected of him. There was no room for hesitation when a single misstep could exile him from his nation for the rest of his life. And no need to take another life.

He turned around to cut free the previous hostage, and then grabbed Garen’s collar and yanked him into place. “You need to get back to the battle,” he told the soldier, biding his time as he selected a different, clean knife from the table. “Every person counts.”

“I will,” the soldier replied agreeably, but he didn’t move.

Garen was a different person when Darius turned around. Head hung low, eyes vacant and fearful. Defeated, as the Noxian had described it. He squirmed in his chair as Darius approached, trying to back himself up into space that didn’t exist. “No, please. I don’t know anything,” he pleaded, in a trembling voice that was not his own.

Darius held Garen’s right wrist down against the arm of the chair and raised his dagger. “Are you sure about that?”

“I am. Please. I swear,” Garen muttered, glancing between the blade and him with wide, panicked eyes. The expression was so unlike him that it almost made it easier to ram the dagger down through his forearm and pin it to the wood beneath.

His scream cut through the air louder than all the rest before it. Louder, and longer, and with enough agony expressed in its breaks and gasps to fill Darius with murderous regret. Garen cowered over his impaled arm, his other hand spasming as though he couldn’t quite process what had happened to him, it hurt so much.

Behind them, the Noxian soldier snickered.

“Please, I don’t know anything,” Garen pleaded again, his voice raw. Darius dug the blade in and began to twist.

Now was when he felt the pain more vividly than ever before. Now, with Garen’s voice filling his ears like the desperate wails of a dying man. He felt the steel stab through his skin, carve his muscles, and grind against bone. He felt it constrict his heart and send his stomach to his throat. He wanted this blade to impale the arms of every soldier in the First Company, including his own. And then their necks.

When he turned around, the soldier had gone, and they were alone with their swallow breaths and self-hatred. Blood coated the whole of Garen’s forearm and dripped down the side of the chair.

Darius let go of the knife, knelt down, and held Garen’s cheek for the first time in three years. He moved close enough to see the cold sweat that covered Garen’s face, and the pain that wrinkled his nose and brows. He said, “I’m sorry.”

And Garen relaxed his face just enough to barely smile. “This… is nothing, compared to what I’ve felt being without you.”

“You can’t say that to me. It’s already hard enough as it is.”

“I don’t know how we live like this,” Garen uttered. It was a surprise to Darius, who thought of Garen standing by the shore all those years ago, completely determined to end their meetings. They had both changed since then, physically and mentally. They had both learned what was most painful about war.

“I don’t, either.”

It was the right time for their lips to meet, and remind themselves of what happiness felt like, but too many things stood between them to make it possible. The pain coursing through Garen’s arm, the fear of getting caught, the subconscious knowledge that this was wrong and would only hurt them more. This had to end now, before another person arrived and forced Darius to kill him.

With one swift movement, Darius pulled out the knife, and he hoped that the shortness of Garen’s grunt served as proof he had been exaggerating his screams earlier. Darius took a bundle of cloth and pressed it to the wound. “I injured your sword arm, so now you have to leave. You’d be of no use to your comrades.”

“I beg to differ,” Garen replied, but he looked less determined than he had before. “I’ll run if you promise me… If there’s anything you can do to stop the chaos, do it. If you can save even one life without endangering yourself. Those are my friends out there. People I’ve trained with for years.” He glanced at the body on the floor of the tent, seeming to recognize it. “This isn’t a raid with a purpose. They’re just being… massacred.”

It had a purpose. Every death had a purpose. Darius didn’t have the time to explain this to Garen, who had no doubt been hearing all his life how barbaric Noxians were. Instead, he lied, believing it would save the one life he cared about. “I promise.”

Garen wasn’t the type to disbelieve him, but he stood there watching for several moments, as though this time he wasn’t sure. Then he peeked out of the back of the tent, checking his escape route.

All at once, Darius felt panic in his throat. He had felt this before, not the last time they’d met but the time before. This was before he had accepted their future, before he had come to terms with never seeing those stubborn eyes again.

He met Garen at the back of the tent and kissed him. He felt something welling up inside him, some vast pool of emotions he’d rejected to acknowledge since he’d started training - love, sadness, anger, grievance, and most of all, happiness. It rose up through his chest and his lips and made him warm, and overwhelmed him, and finally he felt his emotions trying to break through the outer facade, and he had to push away.

He felt Garen’s heart beating against his hand, and for one moment he felt at peace.

“Thank you, Darius,” Garen said, and Darius wondered what he was being thanked for. Hundreds of murdered allies, a stab wound, and a kiss. He wished that Garen had never met him at all, because Garen deserved better than this.

He watched those blue eyes glimmer with a hope that he couldn’t understand, and then turn and evaporate forever into the darkness of the forest beyond the tent.

It stank of blood and death. Darius pulled the body outside to be burned with the rest of them. Better to burn them now and be scolded for the smoke than to risk someone noticing that one body was missing. He stared at the pile of mangled corpses, which Garen had no doubt walked past, and saw in himself a man who had lost his humanity.

In return, he had gained the strength to see reality, and mold it for himself. He wouldn’t see Garen again, and even if he did, there would be no future for them. There never had been. When the time came, he had to be strong enough to do what was expected of him.

Regret seeped through him like a disease. Regret for every time he had let his emotions rule him, including tonight. He promised himself this was the last time he would allow himself to be so foolish. The last time he would spare a Demacian due to selfish childhood dreams.

* * *

He remembered the look on Katarina’s face when they arrived back at camp. She was incredulous, and… relieved. Even so, when she met his eyes among the company of battered soldiers, she turned away.

The most injured of the group broke off and headed toward the Healers’ Tent; the rest of them followed their captain to the Command Tent for an immediate session. Once the lanterns were lit and they were gathered around the table, it was easy to see just how demanding the mission had been. Numbers had thinned, and most everyone was nursing some kind of wound. Captain Alfarri himself looked exhausted, but fairly unscathed.

“We lost twelve of our own; another five are missing and assumed dead. The chaos caused by the fire made it significantly harder to navigate their camp than it needed to be. Despite that, we accomplished our mission. It is highly likely that a number of Demacians escaped. They will live to describe the massacre and strike fear in the hearts of those who haven’t faced us before. Darius, report?”

“But the ones who escaped, sir,” a meek soldier interrupted. “What if they saw the plans?”

“Jericho, please explain to this harebrain what we already discussed.”

“The purpose of the mission was not to delete all knowledge of the plans,” Jericho explained calmly. “That would be near impossible, considering the amount of time they had to make copies and send them out to other camps. The purpose was to punish them for stealing from us, and send a clear message to all others who would dare try something similar in the future.”

“Darius, report?” Rory repeated.

“There are two camps who received the plans, about ten miles to the north and to the east of the one we just destroyed, each of similar size.”

“Can you be sure of that information?”

“Two Demacians confirmed it.”

“And that’s why we do the Prisoner Treatment,” Rory commented with an amused grunt. “To make sure cowards like that aren’t amongst our elite teams. Which brings me to my next point. I saw a lot of stupidity out there. People snagging a kill before the signal and alerting their entire camp. Breaking formation, thinking you’re better than your squad and leaving them behind. I didn’t think I had to lecture you like children again, but apparently I do. You are all fresh out of recruit training. Sure, you’re stronger than the rest of the recruits. That doesn’t mean jack shit in the face of an army. There’s something General Laska used to always say. What’s an army without order?”

 _A bunch of idiots running around to die,_ Darius thought, remembering the red-haired drill sergeant. Was she a _general?_ What was she doing teaching recruits, and not out there winning the war?

“A bunch of idiots running around to die,” Rory said, but it sounded almost like a different statement entirely, since it wasn’t coming from _her._ Suddenly Darius thought he knew the answer to his own question. They needed someone like General Laska to inspire the new recruits, who would compose the next generation of the army. She was probably as thrilled about her assigned position as Darius was surprised. But no matter which way you looked at it, recruit training was important. He had come out of that first week an entirely different person.

“Next time one of you thinks you’re special enough to disobey orders or run ahead of your squad, feel free to keep running and not come back,” Rory continued. “I will not send idiots out of my company into the central army.”

The tent was silent.

“Speaking of which, one of you is due for reassignment. Darius, you’ve been with us for two years and lived to tell the tale. I’d love for you to do my dirty work during the next raiding party, but it’s going to take us a week or so to recuperate, and you’d be of better use to the central army during that time. Gather your belongings and come meet me for your orders.”

Darius nodded. He had been expecting this announcement for awhile now. Every couple of weeks someone came and someone went, without much ceremony. He assumed that the First Company was, more than anything, a place for the best recruits to meet and learn from each other before being split up amongst the battalions of the central army.

Once the meeting was dismissed, he exited the tent to meet a waiting Katarina with her arms crossed. She said, “Talon wants to talk to you.”

They headed towards the Recuperation Tent in silence. Talon was sitting on the edge of his cot, twirling a dagger between his fingers, torso all bandaged and brown hair hanging down his back. He didn’t look when Darius entered, but continued watching his hands. “Kat told me what you said about Jericho. Is it true?”

“Would I make up something that ridiculous?”

“Guess not,” Talon replied. “That means we should keep an eye on him. Someone with the power to wipe out an entire company doesn’t belong at our rank.”

“Darius won’t be keeping an eye on anyone,” Katarina said, a malicious tint to her voice. “He’s graduating.”

“That so?” Talon looked up then, meting out the slightest smile. Then he turned his gaze to Katarina. “Why do you sound so offended by it?”

She flushed. “Offended? More like relieved. It means there’s one less person to betray us.”

“Have I missed something?” Talon asked.

Darius shook his head, not to say that nothing had happened, but that it wasn’t worth talking about. “I wouldn’t be concerned about Jericho. He keeps to himself, but holds the values of Noxus at heart. If you die it’s your own fault, not his.”

He could feel Katarina’s rage emanating beside him, and decided to take a step further to the side.

“Still, why is he grouped with us?” Talon queried.

“Could be that High Command would take him in if they knew his strength. They can’t keep tabs on every single soldier,” Darius said.

“Could be,” Talon said, placing his dagger on the table and gingerly sitting back. “But I don’t suppose any of this matters to you now. We may never see you again.”

“Eat your words. Even if you don’t see me as equals, you’ll see me as part of High Command.”

“Grand General Darius? Has a nice ring to it.”

Darius couldn’t hear the ring. Somehow the title didn’t feel right to him. The Grand General was more of a figurehead than a leading warrior; they sat back in High Command and sent their Generals out to do the fighting for them. It disgusted him.

“He’ll die before he reaches that position,” Katarina scoffed. “Maybe his teammates will leave him behind.”

“Oh, Kat. You never did learn to let go of a grudge,” Talon said with a smile, and she answered by drawing her blades. He waved her off casually. “Not now. We’ll open our wounds.”

“That’s the idea,” she answered, sadistically enough for them to see she’d regained her humor. “Care to see which one of us bleeds out first?”

“Darius will,” Talon said, and a dagger whooshed past Darius’s face before he could react. “All of this was just an elaborate ruse to corner him.”

Darius snorted, and they started laughing. Despite all his musings on strength and detachment, Darius realized he would miss this. He would miss his friends, who he had promised himself from the beginning he would not become attached to. Somehow they had latched onto him anyways. Like the Demacian boy who kept coming back.

There was no place for friends in this war-torn world. At least this time they were not torn away from him by blood, but they almost had been. He could not count on their strength - only his own. Only strength could preserve life.

Maybe one day he would be strong enough to protect them.


	6. Chapter 6

He didn’t have many things to gather. Several changes of clothes, light armor, his favored weapon, and a flask of water for the road. The camp he went to would have enough supplies to replace what he left behind. As a soldier, one learned to live with only themselves and a weapon. It wasn’t much different from living on the streets, except that other soldiers were doing it with you.

Rory was waiting for him in the Command Tent, looking over maps to pass the time. With his size, Darius was easy to detect despite his reserved demeanor. Rory looked up and handed him two rolled-up documents. “These are your official orders, and a letter for Commander Marcks. You’re assigned to the Blood Legion, Sixth Battalion, which is convenient since you can deliver news of what happened here. A supply wagon came in today which you can hitch a ride back with.”

“Any other orders?”

“Don’t die,” Rory said, his mouth twitching in the closest manner Darius had seen to smirk. The man hadn’t smiled in the past two years. “Though I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that.”

Darius nodded.

“To be honest, I received your orders a week ago and should have sent you then. I didn’t, but not because I have any qualms about interrogating Demacians myself. I see in you the qualities of a great Noxian. That’s refreshing. The recruits that get sent to me are supposed to be the best of the best, yet so many of them fail to comprehend our goal as a nation.”

“How do you know that I comprehend it?”

“Look, I get it. You’ve got some tragic story, grew up on the streets, and now you don’t say much. High Command keeps full profiles of every recruit and sends ‘em out to us, so we know who we’re leading. You being quiet doesn’t prevent me from seeing how you carry yourself in battle, and how you look upon weaker recruits.”

“They’re of no use to Noxus unless they can win.”

“See what I mean?” Rory replied, acknowledging him in a way that Darius had never seen before. Arms crossed, eyes focused, as though they were equals accosting each other, and not a teacher judging his student. After nearly three years, Darius remembered vividly how he had been looked upon in the first week of recruit training. With disgust and disdain, since he was useless to Noxus unless he could win.

“Are you challenging me?” Darius asked.

“Don’t get arrogant. I have fifteen years of battle experience and you’re still a kid. That doesn’t mean you can’t rise to the occasion with time. And that’s why I’m telling you this. The weakness I see among the top recruits will be even more prevalent across the fodder you’re joining. I can’t control how you deal with it, but I can encourage you not to accept it. Use your voice. Take that confidence you have and lead your peers to their potential.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

“Good.”

Darius waited to be dismissed, but Rory continued looking at him. He didn’t go back to his maps, or even rescind his focus. He was no longer Darius’s captain. They were two soldiers speaking to each other, united in their vision for a greater Noxus.

“You said that you’ve seen full profiles of all the recruits,” Darius said. “What do you know about Jericho Swain?”

“That one’s an interesting story. There’s no birth record of him. The first written record of him is at an infirmary on the outskirts of Noxus. His leg was broken in a couple different places but he didn’t seem to comprehend the pain, and he refused magical treatment. On the first day of recruit training he challenged and killed his drill sergeant. He then refused a position as Captain and requested to join this Company as a recruit.”

Surprise must have cracked through the stone wall of Darius’s expression, since Rory once again adopted his unfitting half-smile, and continued,  “It’s possible that he’s not even Noxian, but he got into the borders somehow.”

“You’re not afraid of him killing you?” Darius asked.

“Even if I was, what good would it do me? If I get beaten it’s my own fault. I’ll keep fighting until that moment comes. _If_ it comes. Until then he’s my subordinate.”

“I’d like to keep track of him.”

“Well, once you’re in High Command I’m sure you can do that.”

“ _You’re_ not even in High Command,” Darius replied.

Rory tapped a finger beside the patch that covered his left eye. “The spear that took this sealed that part of my future. It went past my eye and punctured my brain. Since then I can’t react as quickly as I used to. If I led the charge in a real battle, I would die in minutes.”

“I’m… sorry.”

“Don’t apologize to me. I shouldn’t have let the spear hit me,” Rory uttered, and despite the honesty in his voice, he seemed angry. Angry, perhaps, at himself. Regretful after all these years. One mistake - one moment of weakness - had changed his life forever.

“I don’t know if you remember being my drill sergeant on my first day of training. I hated you back then. I couldn’t believe you would call me weak after I took down half the group. But now I understand,” Darius said. “You made me understand. And that’s probably why you’re able to praise me now.”

“Don’t give me all the credit. General Laska did her part too.”

“And you did yours.”

“That mean face must make everyone afraid to tell you how sentimental you really are.”

“I wouldn’t call it sentimental,” Darius said, bothered. “Just honest.”

“Sure,” Rory replied, standing up. “Now get out of here so I can get a couple hours of shut-eye before noon.”

The mention of sleep reminded Darius of just how tired he was. The camp hadn’t slept in nearly twenty-four hours, and his leg ached like hell.

He started falling asleep in the back of the empty wagon, as his conversation with Rory ran over and over through his head. He heard the lilt of Garen’s voice in his own words - in his formal tone, in his unwarranted expression of gratitude. He saw himself as a child - angry, silent, distrustful - reaching out, trying to take rightful hold of a now adult body who wished to be someone else. He felt a spear of agony stab through his right forearm, grinding bone, and jolted awake. He heard Garen scream.

It echoed through his consciousness even after he had awoken, heart beating fast, clutching his arm where he had pierced Garen’s. He curled forward, safe in the darkness of the covered wagon-bed, and cried.

* * *

Commander Marcks was a stern, silver-haired woman with the straightest back Darius had ever seen. She was not old, which made him wonder if her hair color was natural or if she had managed to experience enough stress in her past thirty or so years to turn it silver already. Either way, it suited her, accentuating her angular face with its straight, thin style. She wore black plate armor with the crest of Noxus stamped onto her breast in red.

She immediately noticed him when he came in, scrutinizing him and his scrolls with hawk eyes, and he knew then that she was the Commander.

“Wait outside,” she said, turning back to the ongoing discussion without offering any further acknowledgement.

When the other officers left the tent about fifteen minutes later, he entered to meet her, and offered the two scrolls. “My orders, and a report from Captain Alfarri of the First Company.”

She took them and read them both without a word. Then, finally, she said, “You are assigned to the Third Company under Captain Wolfrick. You will find your quarters on the east side of camp. Dismissed.”

“What of the stolen plans?”

“That is for me and the other officers to discuss. You are to report to your quarters.”

“I’ve thought of a way to mitigate the damage.”

“Have you, now?” she sneered, somehow retaining the same strict facial expression even as her voice seethed. “I’m sure it would stand up well against the ideas of officers with ten to twenty years more experience than you. This is not the first time that a recruit has come to me from the First Company and thought that they were qualified to start commanding. There’s a reason your little company of egoists is responsible for our military documents falling in the hands of the enemy. Now it’s our job to clean up, and yours to go to your quarters.”

Darius bit his tongue. This was what disgusted him about the current state of Noxus. Delegates of High Command believed that they were almighty, thus remaining deaf to the voices of  soldiers who composed the backbone of their army. A structure like this could never rise. Only a united army could hope to fight against ideals as distinct and virulent as Demacia’s.

For a time, Captain Alfarri had made him hopeful. But there was much work to be done.

Rage told him to challenge her here and now. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a black crow tore at his useless corpse, reminding him of the risks. He remembered the chessboard beneath his feet. For now, he conceded and searched for his quarters.

* * *

The Sixth Battalion marched the following week, toward a Demacian garrison just north of Mogron Pass. The garrison was recently built, and had been killing off Noxians traveling to Shurima and other areas south of the mountain pass. The official statement released by the Demacians was that they were protecting Shuriman lands from Noxian pillagers; the reality was that they were moving to take control of the continent, one subtle step at a time. They could not be allowed to limit access to free lands.

The Third and Fourth Companies would lead the charge against the garrison, while the rest of the Sixth Battalion fortified their position and began scouting along the Tempest Flats. If they found more Demacian forces hidden out among the Flats south of Noxus, they would know for certain that the Demacians were trying to expand their control. Their treacherous seeds would be uprooted before they could sprout.

It was a straightforward charge. The lands were flat up until the mountain range, disallowing stealth. The Demacian garrison would see them coming from several miles away, and have time to prepare; however, their forces looked few. It was estimated to be an easy victory.

About a quarter mile away from the garrison, Captain Wolfrick ordered them to raise their shields and gain pace. Arrows rained down from the top of the wooden fort. A small company of Demacian soldiers defended the entrance. When the two forces were mere paces away from each other, Darius charged out from behind his own defenses, dodged between two protruding lances, and swung his axe straight into a Demacian shield, feeling its wielder topple beneath his strength. The impact rippled through their first line of defense, offsetting shields and sending now defenseless men stumbling. More Noxian soldiers emerged from behind their shields and plunged, with furious war cries, into a line of helpless victims.

Ten seconds in and the ground before the fort was covered in blood. The next wave of Demacian soldiers was not so easy to topple. Corpses from both sides littered the fort entrance. Soon Darius lifted his axe from one, and there were no Demacians left to contest. The inside of the fort was empty.

He turned around and saw Captain Wolfrick gazing sidelong, towards the mountain pass, with fear in his eyes. “Retreat,” he uttered. “Retreat! _Retreat!”_

Demacians were flooding out from the mountain pass - a force at least twice the size of their own, lying in wait for an ambush. They had foreseen this attack.

So had Commander Marcks, Darius realized. She had sent only two companies as a bait, not because this was an easy victory. She had sent them to die.

Captain Wolfrick stood in the center of his soldiers, screaming retreat, seeming to move in slow motion. As he turned to run, he grasped one soldier’s collar and propelled him in the opposite direction, trying to place a human shield between the Demacians and himself. In his foolish panic he believed that one body would somehow protect him from an onslaught of hundreds. Darius screamed, “Wolfrick!”

And when the so-called Captain met his eyes, so did Darius’s axe to his neck. His last expression was ugly and panicked. It hit the bloodsoaked ground and stared lifelessly up at its soldiers, who had frozen where they were, watching instead of retreating.

“Look around you!” Darius roared. “Do you think you can run? We started a fight, and the Demacians answered! So finish it! Finish it, or lay down to die!”

The horde of Demacians inched closer. Darius stepped over Wolfrick’s body and walked towards them, half-expecting no one to follow. He could not trust anyone’s strength but his own, even against an army of hundreds.

Behind him, someone yelled, “Embrace death!”

More voices joined the cry. “Inspire fear!”

And then, the entire Third Company - maybe the Fourth as well. _“Forever strong!”_

Noxian soldiers were running beside him and ahead of him, raring to fight against all odds. If there had been fear in them before, it was gone now. Around him Darius felt something different. Something intoxicating. It made his body weightless, and cleared his mind until there was nothing left but a beautiful, united war cry.

This was _power._

Two walls of soldiers collided outside of the fort, each one just as ferocious as the other, just as determined. Bodies fell, and more took their place. Darius entered the fray with a swing powerful enough to send three soldiers flying. The next line of Demacians hesitated to approach him, and were collapsed upon by Noxian soldiers from either side. He paved a path for them of blood and rage, remembering every cold night and harrowing injury he had ever endured. Every bruise, sore, and broken bone. Every beat of his heart, even when it ached and threatened to fail. All of it led up to this.

He fought until there was no one left to contest him. A small, scattered force of Demacians was retreating back into the mountains. The rest of them lay dead for maybe half a mile around him. He had been stabbed in the side and blood was flowing freely. Before he could tear the shirt off a dead man, a Noxian soldier was at his side pressing cloth to the wound. Agony pierced his expression, and on instinct he shoved the soldier away.

“You’re the reason we won this,” the soldier said, watching him warily. “The reason I’m alive. So I’d like to get you back to the fort alive, if you’d let me.”

The cloth in the soldier’s hand was soaked red from one pat. Darius realized he would die if he didn’t accept help, and nodded in consent.

The soldier walked him back to the fort with one arm around his waist and the other hand pressuring the wound. Along the way, another soldier joined them, supporting Darius’s other side. There were not many of them left; maybe three or four dozen out of the two hundred they had started with. Most of the bodies littering the ground were Demacian.

Several healers were at work inside the fort, and when they saw him they switched their priority. Injured soldiers watched him from all directions. The two soldiers helping him had admiration in their eyes.

“I killed Wolfrick,” Darius said. “Doesn’t that make me a traitor?”

“If we had lost, maybe. But then we’d all be dead, so it wouldn’t matter anyhow.”

“The way I see it, you took his place as our Captain,” the other said.

Darius almost laughed, but the pain wrinkled his face again. As convenient as it was, being healed was never a pleasant feeling. “We’ll see what Commander Marcks has to say about that.”

* * *

She stood straight as a board in the center of her tent, glaring at him as he came in. It had been a week since the battle outside the fort, which was now held by a full company of Noxian soldiers. “The other soldiers reported to me. They say you killed Captain Wolfrick. Is this true?”

“Yes.”

“Could you explain why you think a conceited worm like you could get away with murdering a superior officer? Do you believe you are somehow exempt from military law?”

“Military law is a load of shit, and Wolfrick was a coward who allowed himself to be killed.”

“I would say it’s a shame that you couldn’t follow the rules,” the commander responded, her nostrils flaring visibly as she drew her sword. “But I hate people like you more than anyone. Perhaps this is a blessing in disguise, since I have an excuse to get rid of you now rather than later.”

Darius pulled his axe from his back, the metal unlatching with a click. His side burned and now his head ached too, just thinking about the number of corrupt Noxians that probably existed and were in power. Commander Marcks raised her sword defensively.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she said.

“Do you think I would allow you to kill me because a piece of paper said so?”

“You are childish fodder with no hope of defeating a commander in a duel. I do not wish to waste my energy when the outcome will be the same whether you fight back or not.”

“Stop talking and try to kill me, coward.”

Even then she hesitated. Her expression was so frigid that Darius could not read whether she was acting like an idiot because she feared him or because she legitimately believed in her reasoning. It occurred to him that _he_ should have feared her, especially considering his injuries, but somehow her attitude made this situation feel comedic. He could not fear someone who so blatantly contradicted the values he had grown up and built his strength on. She was the antithesis of Noxus, and yet she stood before him with a Noxian commander’s badge on her chest.

The standoff was broken when another person entered the tent. His voice crackled with a familiar jeering rasp. “I hate to interrupt your fascinating lineup of excuses, Commander Marcks, but I’m afraid I must. You are no longer in charge of this battalion. I am.”

Her gaze snapped towards the newcomer, but she did not lower her sword. “Excuse me?”

At the tent entrance stood Jericho Swain, outfitted in green armored robes - a befitting update from the tattered cloth armor he had worn as part of the First Company. “You are excused. From your post, that is.”

The humor was lost on her, but not on Darius. So this was the silent crow’s personality.

He handed her a scroll which presumably contained his orders, so she sheathed her weapon with a skilled flourish and began reading. Darius did not loosen his grip on his weapon.

“Commander Swain, this man is a traitor. He killed his captain in cold blood and will face proper punishment.”

“I am well aware,” Swain answered, but he made no move towards Darius.

“So you refuse to punish him?”

“Perhaps you should consult your beloved rulebook a little more often. It clearly states that a commanding officer may override the default punishment with any consequence of their choosing. Seeing as this soldier is under my rightful command, I choose to promote him.”

“Pro _mote_ him?”

“Of course. This soldier has explicitly demonstrated that he is stronger than Captain Wolfrick, making him a perfect candidate for replacement.”

“This is a travesty, and High Command will hear of it directly.”

“When they do, I hope they have the good sense to demote you, or preferably execute you. If I didn’t know any better I would say that you were a Demacian officer, not a Noxian one. You and your brainless crusade of rules are a disgrace to Noxus.”

Commander Marcks’s shoulders raised in the beginnings of an indignant shrug. It was the closest she had ever come to breaking her posture. She gathered a stack of scrolls from the tabletop and stormed out without another word.

Swain turned to Darius and said, “Congratulations on your promotion. We will be merging the remains of the Third and Fourth Companies under your care. They owe you their lives and thus will give their lives for you. Do not abuse that power, Captain.”

“I depend on no one’s strength but my own.”

“Then we should get along well.”

“What is your purpose here?”

“A brave question. Do you mean to imply that my purpose here is not to benefit Noxus, like everyone else?”

“Noxians have lost sight of that goal. They fight for the thrill of battle.” Darius glanced down at his crude axe, thinking of all the bodies it had sliced without achieving anything in the long run. “And people like Commander Marcks relish their power, doing nothing with it.”

“I have a vision of the endgame, Captain. It is as clear in my mind as the waters of the Serpentine. Since you are not asking how I was promoted from fresh recruit to Commander in the course of three weeks, I assume you already know my circumstances. But I assure you that I am Noxian. And I have come here with a purpose.”

Although his eyes were red, they were almost a gentle shade of it. They spoke of a time and place beyond a blood-red sunset. The man himself boasted an air of strength and ambition unlike anything Darius had ever experienced; despite his fragile body and pallid face, he was in control. He was intelligent. He was an unknown advent, here to upset the tainted balance of Valoran. To create a different world.

“I trust you,” Darius said, for the first time and the last.

“Good. Then we have important work to do,” Swain replied with an eerie smile, signalling the beginning of the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An enormous thank you to deruzard for giving me advice on this fic and making my dream of fanart come true. She is an AMAZING artist and you can check out what she's done for this chapter here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/7042504
> 
> And of course, thank you to everyone reading. It is an absolute joy to be able to share my imagination with you and I always love to hear your thoughts. <3


	7. Chapter 7

“There was an army of thousands. A festering wound upon the face of Valoran, which had marched from the cowardly western shore to the gates of Noxus, determined to spread its disease within our mighty nation. There were traitors among us who wished to hide behind our walls and wait for death. Among them, one hero stood - one great, towering bulk of strength with an axe the size of a grown man - and called his soldiers to battle.

“They flooded out from the gates like a horde of charging bulls, flinging their enemies aside like the insects they were, painting the ground with the blood of cowards. The Demacians were flattened under the weight of Noxian hammers, sliced to pieces by finely crafted swords, decimated by the wills of our glorious warriors.

“At their head, our hero stood face-to-face with the Demacian king. With a mighty roar, our hero raised his axe, and for the following minutes the two of them were locked in a battle so fierce that neither Noxians nor Demacians dared try to intervene, because any who did would surely have their bodies ripped apart.

“For a moment, all went still… as Jarvan’s sword impaled our hero’s scarred and mighty body. His soldiers could not believe the sight. Their wills were shattered in a single tragic act by the cursed Demacian king. A curse which was soon broken, as General Sion’s hands wrapped around the craven’s wrinkled old neck.

“Jarvan’s sword was jammed in to the hilt, and blood streamed from the wound in waterfalls. But the General’s grip only grew tighter. As he raised the Demacian scourge off the ground, crushing his neck with both hands, Demacian soldiers threw themselves on him. They ran their weapons through him, banged their fists against him, and clawed his fingers until they bled, but his grip held until Jarvan III, King of Demacia, was gone from this world.”

The messenger stopped reading then, interrupted with his mouth open by Commander Fergus, who banged her stein on the table and said, “Good riddance, too!”

The other commanders were laughing, and had been throughout the telling of the story. It wasn’t the first time they had heard the news, nor the first time they had heard such an overdone account of important events. The public lapped it up, but seasoned warriors knew better than to believe anything past the basic plot points.

“What happened then, courier? Did General Sion absorb the multitude of weapons impaling him into his body, and transform into an unstoppable beast with axe-hands and a flogger for a head?”

There was another burst of laughter, as the boy standing at the front of the tent stared ahead with vacant eyes. By now he had visited four Command Tents, and was fully prepared not to be taken seriously. He didn’t even bother to try finishing the article, and instead remarked, “May I be excused?”

Only two of the officers in the tent were not laughing. Jericho Swain, now a general, waved the boy off. “You are.”

“But General, sir!” Fergus uttered, shooting her arm out in protest. “You can’t leave us hanging off a cliff like that!”

Beside her, Darius raised his axe from the ground and shot her a voracious glare. “Should I disprove that statement? The mountains aren’t far.”

“Oh, you two are the most uptight officers I’ve ever had the displeasure of…” She trailed off as Swain stared at her, and instead ended with a burp. The courage of most people, including ranking officers, did not last long under the gaze of four pairs of glowing red eyes - three of them belonging to a demonic bird.

“While I agree with Darius that this momentous event paves the way for a victory even grander, and that we should be making plans for that victory,” Swain said calmly. “By all means, celebrate now. The important things can wait.”

Glum expressions and silence fell across the room. Finally, Swain stood up and moved in front of the strategy table. “My purpose here is not to lower morale. Your laughter is welcome, but please allow me to direct it over a healthy discussion about our next moves, instead of allowing this meeting to devolve into a purposeless ale festival.”

Many of the officers nodded. One crossed her arms and said, “I suppose most of Noxus will be marching by tomorrow. What position do we take?”

“Currently, we are positioned across from the camp where Jarvan IV is rumored to be located,” Swain explained. “I suggest we attack before their little prince can rush back to his castle.”

One officer snorted. “It’d be a risky battle, but I have to agree. It’d be nice if their royal line of cowards died here.”

The tent flap opened, and an excited Noxian soldier entered with eyes wide. “General Swain, sir! The raid led by Captain Urgot just arrived back! It was  _ more _ than successful. They brought back Jarvan IV!”

“What?!” Fergus blurted out, spitting ale all over the ground.

“The prince himself! He’s being tied up as we speak!”

“Well, this changes things,” Swain remarked, meeting Darius’s eyes.

“I’d like to speak to him,” Darius said.

“I’ve heard that Jarvan IV is braver than his father. More reckless, too, by the looks of it,” one officer explained. “You might not be able to get anything out of him.”

“You obviously haven’t seen Captain Urgot at work. Interrogation is his job, not mine.”

“Well, best of luck to him, then. But we’re too far from Noxus to risk transporting the prince. It’s best if we kill him as soon as possible.”

“I’ll give Urgot four hours,” Darius said, and the officer nodded. “But I’m speaking to Jarvan first. Permission to leave?”

“Granted,” Swain replied. “Return to me when you are satisfied.”

He exited the tent then, red cape flowing out behind him. Upon promotion to Commander he had been offered a custom-made weapon and armor. He had been less than partial to the cape at first, but Draven had convinced him, and now he wore it as a tribute to his brother if not anything else. It had grown on him since then.

The armor was quality, and finally felt like it fit him. But by far the most befitting component of the upgrade was the axe he could call his own. It had the right weight to feel both slick and powerful in his grip, with a curved blade sharp enough to cut stone. When blood splashed, it coated the inlaid skull and dripped down its needlelike teeth to form an even more gruesome symbol. And there was only one of its kind.

He brought his axe with him into the tent where Jarvan was being held, though he didn’t intend to use it. It wouldn’t feel right to stand in the presence of a Demacian unarmed, no matter how pitiful they looked stripped of their armor, chained to a post, and beaten bloody.

Despite all this, Jarvan had not lost his will. He looked up with feral eyes when Darius entered, glowing blue beneath a fringe of thick brown hair. For a moment Darius lost his thoughts. He had seen those features before, in what felt like another lifetime - similar but not quite the same. Jarvan’s snarl was much less pretty.

He returned to the present reality just as quickly, or thought he did. In this reality, the Lightshield bloodline was about to be irreversibly severed, leaving Noxus an opportunity unprecedented in all its bloody decades of war. In this reality… someone’s childhood best friend was about to be murdered.

So this was the clever, indulgent young prince that Garen had always talked about.

Darius hated him.

They watched each other for a time, Jarvan examining him as someone of importance - as though he would still be able to use that information later on. He had not given up yet. He didn’t seem like the type who ever would.

“Enjoying the view…  _ scum?”  _ the prince remarked, his final word laced with so much hatred it might have dripped from his lips as black poison.

“What would you do after we burned your nation to the ground, and forced you to watch?” Darius asked, letting his own thoughts flow without consideration. “Would your laws or royal blood help you then?”

“My nation would never burn.”

“Would your rotting corpse of a father be proud?”

“My father was a hero, and a much greater man than you would ever be.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I know enough. You’re Noxian. You have never known the meaning of love, justice, or-”

Darius knelt to grip his throat and crush it against the post, and even as he did, the hellish animosity in Jarvan’s eyes did not falter. Beneath a composed exterior resided a unbending demon, whose hatred would fuel his spirit to his very last breath.

It took all of Darius’s willpower to let go, and leave the exorcising to the High Executioner, who was just approaching the prisoner’s tent as Darius exited. He was a terrible sight to behold. Attached to his stump of a right arm was a long scythe, and both of his missing legs had been replaced with hextech prosthetics. There was hardly a section of his skin which was not scarred. His face had been mashed and sliced into a pulp of veiny cartilage, leaving only his eyes looking human. It was a wonder he was still alive. The healers had no explanation for it, other than that he refused to die.

“You have four hours to make that trash regret his existence,” Darius muttered, leaving a wide berth as he moved past. The monstrous creature didn’t exactly smell sterile. “Then kill him.”

He did not bother looking back. He found relief in the training yard, where he pushed his rage and anguish through his fists until they bled. Noxians loved just like everyone else. Noxians suffered just like everyone else. The difference was that they were stronger. That they could overcome those emotions for a greater cause. 

Noxians faced the tallest barriers and made the greatest sacrifices, yet Runeterra looked upon them as ruthless savages driven by bloodlust. If only they knew the turmoil that fueled his strength, and made these wooden dummies splinter beneath his fists. It was not bloodlust.

He heard the prince screaming from across the camp. The sound cut through the night and chilled his blood, calming him enough to be still and watch the stars above. It was not the screams which calmed him but the silence he knew would come afterward, when the Lightshield line was dead. 

Then they would march, and forge a greater world.

* * *

He was attentive the moment his eyes opened, as though alerted by an undue presence. For a few moments it was silent. He stared up at the cloth ceiling, senses open and muscles tense. Then the shouting began.

Darius had equipped his armor so many times by now that the process only took a few minutes. Perhaps those few minutes would have won the war - or perhaps they would have cost him his life. There were Demacians scattered all around the prisoner’s tent, locked in combat, but successfully holding off anyone who wanted to enter. They could not stop Darius. Anyone who tried served to wet his axe with their blood.

He entered the tent just in time to watch a thick blade fall through Urgot’s shoulder and down his body in a gruesome shower of red. The two halves of his body fell before Jarvan’s bloodsoaked knees, leaking organs. The sword was planted in the ground beside a Demacian soldier in proud blue-and-silver plate armor, who was kneeling to help Jarvan to his feet.

The soldier placed a gloved hand beneath Jarvan’s chin, and chided, “Look at me.” His voice was firm, yet concerned. And smooth as the river current on a summer day. Beneath a spatter of blood his face was distraught, affectionate, vulnerable. An expression to save the prince’s sanity after four hours of torture. An expression that should have been reserved for Darius, who stood unnoticed at the entrance as this scene of betrayal played out.

Only when he raised his axe did Garen look up, yanking his own blade out of the ground just in time to deflect the blow, and save the prince’s life a second time. His posture remained weak, as though he trusted Darius not to continue an assault against him.

_ Not this time. _

Darius swung again, and Garen cried out as the impact swept his sword aside and clipped the front of Garen’s armor. 

_ I promised myself. _

Even unarmed, Garen raised his hand to let the axe embed itself in his vambrace. He yelled as though something had broken. Blood seeped from the split in the vambrace as Darius pressed down on him, but Garen supported the limb with his other arm and kept fighting. He looked into Darius’s eyes, pleading, and that was almost enough to make it stop.

But Darius remembered what he had just seen, and jealousy shot through him like adrenaline, shocking his muscles into an even harder shove.

“Get out of my way,” he uttered, voice low and eyes wide.

“I will not,” Garen replied, shuddering as he pushed back. “...leave my prince undefended.”

“ _ Your _ -?” He did not finish the sentence, as it molded into a cry of rage and a merciless shove. The axe tore away from Garen’s vambrace as he plunged across the room, grimacing in confusion; all he had meant by the term was that he was Demacian, and this was his duty.

A duty he would die carrying out, if he had to. A duty for which he would scramble to his feet and throw himself in front of an upraised axe. Darius almost carried through with it, but his arms seemed to swerve aside of their own accord, and his axe split the ground beside Garen’s feet instead of splitting him in two.

Why couldn’t he do it?

_ Why? _

Even with Garen’s back turned to him, arms wrapped around the coward whose death would win them the war, Darius could not keep his promise to himself. He could not take the life being offered so willingly to him. Even with his anguish welling up inside him, and making his arms shake with the impulse to take away from everyone what he could not have for himself. Even with Jarvan looking past Garen’s shoulder with vacant eyes, unappreciative of the charming boy and perfect guardian who had stayed by his side all these years.

Garen turned to look at him, and gravity seemed to wrap around his ankles and make them immovable. So he stood there, shocked at his own failure, as Garen coaxed his prince to his feet, and by the time they were all standing Darius had abandoned his axe in the ground to stare at his trembling hands in disbelief.

There was no ‘thank you’ this time. Not in front of the prince, whose Demacian morals would lead him to execute his best friend on the slightest suspicion, if he recollected his senses later. There was only the look of urgent relief in Garen’s eyes as he turned away and tore himself an exit.

He turned around one last time and offered the slightest nod. It was the most unfair thing he could have done, when Darius already wanted to be left there with a sword through his chest. Then at least there would be an excuse for his failure. Now, his only excuse was the glint of gratitude that shone in Garen’s eyes, the blood that painted clear skin black in the pre-dawn darkness, and cast a lead blanket over the brightest source of hope and happiness in Runeterra. Even if the rest of them did, Garen did not deserve this war.

He deserved to have his heavy pauldrons eased off of him, and his calloused hands graced with rosewater and kisses. He deserved to be held with gentle arms and greeted with laughter. He deserved to have the world brought to him, not to be carrying the bearer of its fate half-conscious over his shoulder, through a field of Noxians who had trained their whole lives to kill.

In marching forth, he chose to take on all these troubles that had never belonged to him. All this from a little boy who couldn’t swing a sword properly no matter how many times he tried. He was beyond believable. He broke every unspoken law of this world and counteracted thirty years’ worth of strength and Noxian discipline in a nod.

All the Noxians filed into the tent at once, and saw Darius standing there over Urgot’s mutilated corpse, Jarvan nowhere to be seen. He looked up, his hands still shaking, and pointed to the rip in the back of the tent, commanding, “Go after him!”

The soldiers followed his directions, but not without puzzled looks. The damage had already been done. It made no sense for him to be standing there while Jarvan was on the loose - by this time probably too far to be caught by anyone present.

Darius did not bother going after them. The legion was to march in a couple of hours, and General Swain would want to see him before then. He hoped that Jarvan would be long gone by then; he hoped that Garen would escape alive. Then Darius would face the consequences.

* * *

Four pairs of glowing red eyes. Previous to now, Darius had not really known what it felt like. Swain was irate, and his bird never looked any less threatening, especially having witnessed what it would do under its master’s command.

“I expected them to send a rescue squad,” Swain was saying, remarkably poised for the anger that bristled within him. “What I did not expect was for Captain Urgot, of all people, to finally meet his end without taking Jarvan with him. And I did not expect for my most competent and trusted Commander to fail to finish the job. I am receiving reports from soldiers than you simply allowed them to escape. If it were not for the multitude of matching statements, I would not believe them. Would you care to tell me what happened?”

There was nothing that Darius could say without having those discerning eyes see straight through him. He did not want to break Swain’s trust, nor did he want to tell the truth. Either route would be suicide.

“Commander Itmar wished to execute you himself. You did not face him because I killed him,” Swain proceeded. He did not have to point for Darius to glance at the pair of legs sticking past the edge of Swain’s desk, picked almost to pieces by the beak of a crow. “I believe he was friends with Marcks. And if I know anything about their little band of snitches, High Command will know of this incident within the week. Without a general on your side at the trial, you are as good as dead.”

“We don’t have time for a trial. The time to march is now.”

“Events on that front are not going as well as we had hoped, either. The death of their king seems to have made them stronger. They are pushing our forces back in the north. Demacia is fueled by its hatred for us, while Noxus remains complacent in its simpleminded love of war.”

“Are you joking me?”

“Grand General Darkwill’s latest propaganda features the executions of various prisoners - including Noxian criminals - in the Grand Square of the capital. I have nothing against your brother, but his career has nothing to do with the war, and Darkwill is so idiotic that he would advertise celebrities rather than the war effort. Residents not on active duty eat it up, becoming absorbed in their own domestic worlds while failing to realize that the Demacians are about to be at their doorstep.”

It had been so long since Darius had returned home that he could hardly imagine what it would look like now. In his childhood he had seen posters featuring war heroes, encouraging young adults to enlist. He imagined seeing those same walls plastered with the face of his brother, the self-appointed Glorious Executioner, and would have snorted if not for the gravity of the situation at hand. Draven must have been in heaven. Little did he know that things out here were turning sour very fast.

“There is no advantage in marching now,” Swain continued, finding a seat behind a different table. “Noxus requires drastic reform. And while I would prefer for you to support me during my upcoming campaign, there is nothing I can do to ensure it if you do not confide in me.” He paused, observed that Darius still had nothing to say for himself, and chose to advance the topic. His anger had settled - or perhaps Darius had misinterpreted it in the first place. Swain was not the type to lose control. Every word, action, and emotion had a purpose. 

“Your height, muscular build, brown hair, and a greatsword. That is the description of the soldier who rescued Jarvan. It is conjectured that his name is Garen Crownguard, Captain of the Dauntless Vanguard, a newly formed elite force. Surely you are familiar with him, since you stood by while he made off with the prince.”

“That’s not…” he began gruffly, but it was. It was exactly what had happened.

“I will not threaten you, Darius, but I will tell you with certainty that we have no hope of winning this war if we do not work together. I have witnessed your loyalty to Noxus, and your skill in battle, enough times not to doubt you regardless of the reason you give me for this morning’s events. Because I have also seen that you have a heart, and that is inescapable. So tell me the truth. Tell me your story, and I will tell you mine.”

Darius imagined the man-sized crow. He imagined it towering above him, red-eyed and angry, sending its horrific brood to tear open his ribcage. He wasn’t even sure if he would fight back. Not against Swain, who was the only leader he would accept out of all the officers who ranked above him. If anyone had a chance at reforming this world, it was Swain. Not him.

He took a breath, and said the simple phrase, “I met him when I was young.”

But to him it was not simple. It was heavier than all his armor and more painful than any wound. To let this secret go after twenty years of hiding was  _ like _ having his ribcage torn open. But the man-sized crow did not appear. Swain waited, unreadable, with his gaunt fingers folded patiently on the table in front of him.

“I tried to kill him this morning,” Darius uttered, skipping over their nine years of meetings and all the firsts they had shared, but his next statement gave Swain all the information he needed to understand. “I missed. On purpose. Then they ran.”

“Your one weakness,” Swain replied.

Darius didn’t want to say it. He couldn’t meet Swain’s eyes when he did. “Yes.”

He expected a lecture, or worse. Instead, Swain reached to his shoulder and retrieved the bird with his fingers. It hopped onto the table and stared up at Darius through six glowing red eyes, looking almost curious. Then, the General told his story.

“My father was Demacian. He had work in Shurima, and one day wandered eastward to the Voodoo Lands. There he met my mother, a Noxian of the Gray Order, who might have killed him immediately had he not expressed his fascination with the ritual she was performing. Many quite unordinary evenings later, I was born. My father would visit from time to time, though he had to remain primarily in Shurima so as not to draw suspicion. I was about ten when he was called back to Demacia, and he could not face the prospect of leaving my mother forever. So he did what any lovestruck occultist would do and secretly twisted their last ritual in an attempt to give her the ability to shapeshift. He believed that if she could transform into a bird, she could fly across the continent and visit him. Things did not turn out as smoothly as he had wished. My mother, Beatrice, killed him with her newly formed claws, and has not regained her human form nor mind since.”

The bird on the table cawed, fluffing out its shimmering blue-green feathers in a moment of almost human self-regard. Not many things made Darius feel sick. This did.

“But she didn’t kill you,” he observed.

“Fortunately not. She seems to have retained her motherly instinct, as she has followed me with utmost devotion since the incident.”

“And you learned to… merge… with her?”

“Technically speaking, it was my hands which tore my father apart,” Swain informed him, emotionlessly. “Over time I learned to control my mother’s impulses and wield her strength for my own purposes. Now she is a perfect servant.”

This indifferent attitude, disturbing as it was, shone a new light on the concept of parents. It was almost comforting to Darius, who had spent many of his orphaned childhood years feeling unjustly jilted by the universe. Perhaps parents weren’t as important as everyone made them out to be. Perhaps they were just another means to an end - an easier way of making it through those early years of life, but not the only way.

“I understand that Demacians are human, just like the rest of us,” Swain commented. “If one of them found his way into your heart, then you are not at fault for it. However, I would like to prepare you for the worst case scenario. If High Command allows you to live, then they will likely want you to prove your loyalty.”

“They’ll want me to kill him.”

“There is one thing I have not told you about my vision. When I refer to victory, I do not refer to total domination. No matter how many we killed, Demacians would never accept our ideals. They would obey outwardly and stew hatred in their hearts until it ruptured into another war. That is no victory. The world requires balance, and no Noxian or Demacian will realize that until they have suffered what you and my parents have suffered. We must write into history a tragedy the likes of which Valoran has never imagined. Then they will understand the true meaning of war.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“It will be a difficult vision to realize. But there is nothing left to discuss. I trust that you will make the right decisions when the time comes.”

“First I have to pass High Command’s shitty trial.”

“If the worst case scenario comes to be, what will you do?”

“It doesn't seem like I have much of a choice.”

“You do. You could choose death, or desertion. But I would advise against those options. By conquering your weakness, you will be unstoppable.”

The concept of killing him was so disturbing as to be unimaginable. Darius thought that he should have felt sick. Instead, he felt numb with the strength to do anything. He had spent all his life trying to grasp that strength, and now he felt it bristling at his fingertips.

Was it strength, or self-defensive apathy?

Darius had to believe the former, because his only option in this life was to carry on. History had no concern for whether his heart remained intact or not. Neither did Noxus.

He turned his head in the direction of home, and though the view was blocked by the cloth wall of the tent, he could imagine the great stone skull as clearly as if it were in front of him. Its mawed black eyes had watched him grow from an admiring child, to a jaded lover, to a soldier with enough gall to believe he could change the world. How would they see him in the coming weeks? As a corpse, or a hero?

“Earlier, you mentioned a campaign,” Darius noted, turning back to the General.

“Yes, and that is another reason I would prefer you to stay alive. To clear away the competition for the next election. Surely I could do it myself, but I would prefer to wrap up this war within the next decade. I don’t have time to battle every insect who thinks they can defeat a man-eating crow.”

“There hasn’t been an election in more than fifty years.”

“Which is why you will be making an extra stop before returning to Noxus with me. It is time for Boram Darkwill’s unnaturally long rule to come to an end, and I believe I have found an opportunity to end it. You will be enlisting the help of Emilia LeBlanc, the enchantress you met in the First Company. She is the only one who can disguise herself to kill him without invoking suspicion.”

“And you already have her favor?”

“The Black Rose, like any motivated organization, is susceptible to bribery. I have assured them that their activities will remain covert under my rule. All you need to do is give the signal.”

“Then I return to Noxus.”

“And, assuming that you make it through High Command alive, you will proceed to dispose of my list of adversaries.”

Darius could have asked what would happen if he didn’t survive, but he wasn’t ready to admit defeat. He would survive. He would hold onto this newfound feeling of belief and carry it through to completion, or die trying. 

Perhaps this was what it felt like to have a purpose. No longer would he have to walk alone through a world of futility and pain. His arms carried the will of a new nation. A united Noxus. He could no longer afford to fail.

No more excuses. Only strength, vision, and the will to carry on.


	8. Chapter 8

Five black columns lined the back wall of the colossal Trial Room. Atop each of them sat a member of High Command, well-groomed and swathed in luxurious armchairs, appearing as though they had not faced real combat in years. Not all members of High Command were like this. Swain wasn’t, and neither was Laska. The ones who remained here at High Command, including the Grand General himself, were those who used their power for themselves, rather than leading the nation to greater heights, as was their original purpose.

The Grand Judge looked down at Darius querulously, small and rat-faced behind her thin glasses. He wondered what she had looked like years ago, when she had been strong enough to make her way up into High Command. Now, she looked as though she would be blown away by a single swing.

"You have been accused by multiple inferior soldiers of fraternizing with the enemy,” she began, in a creeping voice. “Given your value to Noxus, we are hesitant to execute you based on a simple rumor. However, to ease the gullible minds of your soldiers and the public at large, you must prove your loyalty with an unquestionable act."

Darius glanced over at Swain, who refused to sit on the pedestals and instead stood at the side of the room, ready to step in if it became necessary. Based on the Grand Judge’s initial statement, it was clear that Swain had already played some part in swaying their minds before bringing Darius into the Trial Room.

“The enemy in question is Garen Crownguard, Captain of the Dauntless Vanguard, an elite group of Demacian soldiers who have wiped out six of our smaller camps since their formation four months ago. Due to their actions, we are seeking to disband the First Company and henceforth keep all field groups battalion-sized or larger. This severely limits our mobility and forces us to play under their rules. Had you succeeded in stopping Crownguard’s rescue attempt, we would have both eliminated the Lightshield royal line and severely wounded one of Demacia’s most troublesome military forces.” She cleared her throat. “However, what’s done is done. We must move forward, and in order to move forward with us, you must rectify your failure. It is unlikely we will gain another chance at Jarvan Lightshield. As such, you will find Garen Crownguard and eliminate him. Failure is not an option. You have two months to bring back proof of the Captain’s demise. If you have not either succeeded or perished within that time frame, you will be taken down by our Hangmen, who have not failed to bring back a mark in almost fifty years. Are these terms understood?”

“Perfectly,” Darius answered, the gravity of her sentence passing through him without piercing his heart, which had been armored over with steel walls of apathy in the recent weeks. He could no longer afford to have a weakness.

“Then, if you have no further questions, we are finished here.”

After several moments of silence, the four occupied chairs vanished into ephemeral black gashes, proving that they had never physically been there to begin with. For political reasons, High Command claimed that effects like these were hextech technology rather than black magic, but the blistering flashes of purple that were left behind convinced Darius otherwise.

Swain approached him. At this point LeBlanc was already on the move; soon Darkwill would be dead, and all of Noxus simmering for a new Grand General. There were several people to be eliminated by the time the news got out - people who would work behind the scenes to sway the election for Darkwill’s successor. Once they were gone, Darius would return to the field and carry out his sentence.

“I was expecting that to be much more tedious,” he commented.

“You can thank me for taking care of the tedious parts beforehand. Thank me with the heads of Darkwill’s private advisors. I’ve been looking forward to their deaths all week.”

“I can take care of them tonight if you know their whereabouts.”

“Tomorrow morning will do fine,” Swain said, gripping his shoulder as he walked past. “This is your first time back in Noxus since you graduated from training. Your dedication is almost frightening. And though I am glad for it, I’m sure you have some things you’d like to revisit while you’re here. Best to take care of those things now rather than later.”

Darius followed him out, silently for a moment, until he breached the doorway and felt the familiar mountain winds brush past him. “Tomorrow morning, then.”

“Meet me at High Command when you are ready.”

The streets of Noxus traveled under Darius like a well-worn path. The sights and smells, dim and stagnant as they were, filled him with remembrance and longing. He wanted to go home. But where was home, really?

The ashen door opened and he saw Draven’s face for the first time in twelve years. Amidst constant marching, training, and considering each day as though it were his last, time had gone by unnoticed. He only noticed it now, in the fully matured angles of his little brother’s face, and he wondered what he would see if he looked in a mirror. Not just glanced. Really  _ looked. _

Surprise overrode Draven’s charismatic persona. “Well, shit,” he said, shaking his head, before pulling Darius out of the vulnerable doorway and into a wholehearted embrace. “I didn’t think you were ever coming back.”

They pulled away from each other, and Darius started to notice the other changes. The long, groomed hair, the tattoos marking Draven’s right shoulder, the meticulously grown-out moustache. “Ah, don’t look so worried,” Draven remarked. “I can handle myself just fine. That doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy a visit from my darling brother, all hulked out and gaining war stories on the double. How’s it going on that front? King Lightshield is dead, so shouldn’t you be on the other side of Valoran taking his shitty old throne?”

“Things aren’t that simple.”

“Of course they’re not. I can’t imagine war would be simple, as much as I’d  _ like _ to envision a bunch of big-headed brutes bashing each other with helmets until one side runs out of working heads,” Draven said, retreating to the front of a mirror in the hallway. He grabbed a case of face paint from the table behind him and starting drawing a thin burgundy line with his finger. “You came at the perfect time. I’m just about to head off to my nightly performance.”

“I’ll just,” Darius looked around, both overwhelmed and impressed by the surroundings at this new address. He had known Draven was a celebrity, but he had never really  _ thought _ about it. “Stay here, then.”

“Stay here? You’re coming to see it.”

* * *

The stadium was bigger than Darius had ever expected it to be. When he was a child, executions had taken place in small, depressing squares, with only the most bitter of the population coming regularly to see them. Draven had revolutionized these weekly killings into a spectacle on the level of Ionian music concerts.

There was no guillotine, and no chains to bind the prisoners as they were released onto the stadium floor. Only one man and his spinning blades, standing tall in the center of the stadium, greeting the crowd with a smile as wide as his ego. He began his performance by throwing one blade in a perfect arc through a prisoner’s neck and back around. The ground splattered with blood. The rest of the prisoners scattered.

It was no more than a stylized slaughter. At times Draven would stop to strike a pose, or play act a conversation with a prisoner before slashing their face into a gory pulp. His killing moves were skillful and varied. At the end, the side doors opened, making the audience gasp and allowing the remaining prisoners to make a run for it. Of course, they were impaled by flying axes mere feet away from their freedom, inciting the entire crowd to delight in thunderous applause.

Darius, observing these meaningless deaths from the seat of honor, felt disappointment steep him. This kind of performance did not warrant the amount of attention it was getting - not when there was a real war happening, and that war had become more of backdrop than a major issue in Noxians’ lives. When Draven swung his axes onto his shoulder and turned to look at Darius from the stadium floor, he was already leaving.

Back at the house, the performance continued, as Draven made references to different parts of the show and tossed his axes around in an alarmingly casual manner. Clearly, Draven had spent a  _ lot _ of time practicing - maybe almost as much time as Darius had spent training. And he really looked to enjoy himself out there.

“You know something?” Draven remarked, throwing his arm around his brother’s shoulder, still holding one axe. He was tall enough to do it, though he didn’t look it from afar. “You almost look as though you  _ haven’t _ just seen the greatest show of the century. Something got you in the doldrums, or what?”

“I’m here because I made a mistake on the field, and had to come back to High Command to be judged.”

“Seeing as you’re still on your feet,” Draven answered, pulling away to mount his axes on the wall in one practiced flourish. They had been cleaned back at the stadium. “They judged you innocent?”

“Not exactly. There’s something I have to do.”

“Hope it’s not a suicide mission.”

“There’s something we promised to never speak of again.” His breath scraped off his tongue like sandpaper. He shouldn’t have said anything; he should have kept it inside, as he always had. But the words had already flowed. 

“The Demacian boy.”

“You remember?”

“Of course I do. Love is no easy business.”

The word struck him, but he ignored it, and sat down at the table.

“He’s a captain now. A good one. His troops have been causing a lot of trouble for us. I let him live, and now I have to kill him.”

Draven sat diagonal from him, stark still, more observant than anyone would ever give him credit for. After a time he leaned back in his chair, one hand laid out firmly on the table in front of him. "You know, death has a particular beauty to it. Life just goes on and on, senseless, repetitive - until someone cuts the line. They write an ending, and when you look at someone's life it's the ending that shapes how the rest of their story is told. Maybe a warrior like him would trust the best ending to be written by someone who understands him. Someone who's fought the same battles, and who's known the same love, and the same loss. I don't know anything about this guy, but if he loved you, I'm sure he would understand."

“I didn’t know you felt that way about life.”

“Life is what you make of it. Us people, we’re desperate for meaning, so we fashion it into everything we do. Your war, my stage. None of it will matter when we’re dead. But, just to make things interesting, we find something to care about and hang onto that with as much passion and meaning as we can muster.”

Any respectable military officer should have argued. The war was so much more than just a word. It had gone on for centuries, taking lives, shaping the continent for generations to come. That was the first argument that came to mind, but it wasn’t Darius’s own. It was what he had been raised to believe.

Draven’s speculations explained why he performed, why the members of High Command stayed back in their luxurious armchairs, and why the entire Noxian army fought without any notion of a greater meaning. They were living for themselves, because that was all life had to offer. The moment one’s heart stopped beating, time and meaning ceased to exist. The next generation was unreachable, nonexistent. 

So why did they laugh? Why did they cry? Why did they bother to feel anything?

“Without meaning, we’re no better than animals,” Darius imposed.

“Maybe. Or maybe the animals are doing themselves a favor, not caring about stuff like this. It’s all in how you look at it. I look at Draven as the most important personality in all of Valoran, and that makes things  _ really _ interesting.”

“What about the future of Noxus? What if Demacia were to march in and burn down your stage tomorrow? Do you really believe that the war effort is less important than you getting cheered on to stab helpless criminals in the back?”

Despite the personal attack, Draven remained perfectly relaxed. “I never told you, but I already carried out my military duty. Four years on the field. I wanted to see what you were going through, so I went active. Killing out there... it’s very different. You feel like you’re really making a difference. But the fact is that no difference has been made in two hundred years. The war has been on and off and no one has ever won. I don’t think anyone is intended to win. Consider it a form of population control, and something to keep the populace loyal and busy. I got fed up and used my vacation days to start a career over here. With a certain amount of popularity I could negotiate my way out of my last two years. But the point is... I understand. I’ve seen that side and decided it wasn’t what I wanted to live for. If Demacia really does win and I lose everything, then I won’t regret a single day of living it up the way I did.”

“But you’ll have nothing.”

“And neither will you. What would you do? Join the Demacian military? Take down an entire nation by yourself?”

“That, or die trying.”

“And I respect you for that. There’s nothing wrong with finding meaning. I said that after death, nothing matters. But listen, that’s  _ why  _ it’s so important to find meaning, and live your life to the fullest until it ends.”

Darius was no longer pressing his hand to his head; he had forgotten the need for it. Somehow, even though his head was swimming with so many thoughts it was dizzying, he felt better. This room, this conversation - it existed outside of Noxus and indifferent to the war. Once they were dead it wouldn’t matter; now, that was oddly comforting.

“So,” Draven said, his joyful tone marking a new turn in the conversation. “We could sit here all night talking philosophy like old fogies,  _ or _ we could head on over to the kitchen and whip up two giant helpings of Draven’s super savory Demacian meat surprise.”

“I don’t even want to ask.”

“I’m kidding, of course. Yordle meat is  _ way _ more tender.”

“Oh, really? I was thinking that Noxian meat would be juiciest of all.”

Draven laughed on the way to the kitchen. It was a sound for sore ears. It reminded Darius not to take things too seriously, or he would end up having a headache for the rest of his life.

* * *

That night he dreamt of the Serpentine River. He stood on one shore, a grown man in civilian garb, the sounds of nature and the warmth of sunlight seeming to block out all the pain of the rest of the world. Even while houses were burning, this place existed. Even while hundreds were dying and nations falling, this happy river brought new life downstream, fertilized the floodplain, and saw new habitats birth out of every so-called disaster that nature endured.

Across the river Garen stood, soaked in blood, although the color didn’t seem menacing. It was as though he had gone for a swim and hadn’t dried off yet, but the coolness of the liquid kept him cheerful in the summer heat. 

“I want to be strong like you,” Garen said.

“You are strong,” Darius answered. “You became too strong. That’s why...”

“I want to conquer people, like you. Soon enough you’ll be strong enough to conquer anyone.”

But strength was not for conquering people; it was for saving them. It was for protecting those who mattered, and forging the world into a better place. He didn’t have the heart to break this truth to the man in front of him, who was gazing at him as though in some distant dream where he was a hero, too.

“Could you help me cross?” Garen asked, putting his hand out.

“Why would I?” Darius answered, his mouth dry. “How can I?”

“Afterwards I’ll help you move forward. You can have twice the strength and two nations to visit.”

“But I want you to see them too. I want you to come to Noxus. I want to show you the shitty places where I grew up, and the wares of the marketplace... the sunset beyond High Command..."

Garen smiled, even as he stood at the grassy brink of his life, and his open hand remained between them with encouraging certainty.

“You will show me. Someday. When you see that sunset you’ll know I’m with you.”

“Fine,” Darius said, taking his hand, and even as he did he chastised himself for falling under the control of this man’s unselfish demeanor. He wished he could take it back but he couldn’t. Garen hopped onto the first rock and kept going, smiling as though there had never been anything to fear.

It hurt. It hurt so bad he thought the pain would never end.


	9. Chapter 9

The plain stretched on over hills and valleys dotted by trees. To the right, far in the distance, were the mountains. To the left, the plateaus. This was the dead center of Valoran, the place where blades met on ground that was equally Demacian and Noxian. Of course, the land wasn’t officially owned by anyone, but in spirit it was. Travel too far west and a Noxian was bound to encounter someone raring to kill them. It had already happened to Darius, at the Serpentine, after all.

The battle that would take place here was predicted to be bloodier than the one outside the capital, where Jarvan III had perished. The main army was traveling towards them in droves. Leading the charge from the right flank was the Dauntless Vanguard.

Swain wasn’t here. He had put Darius in charge of the legion while he remained in Noxus, running his campaign. A victory today would mean that the next march could move straight on towards Demacia, unimpeded, with Grand General Swain at the head of the entire army.

Perhaps more importantly than that, at least for Darius, there was business to be taken care of at the right flank. Which was why he turned to the silver-haired commander beside him and left the frontal assault under her charge.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Did General Swain put you in charge so you could run away from your responsibilities?”

“I’m not running, Marcks.”

“Then what? You need to take an emergency piss?”

“I’m going to kill the Captain of the Dauntless Vanguard,” he replied sharply. “And you’re going to clear the way for this battle’s victory, if it costs you your life. Focus on _your_ job, not mine.”

“Fair enough,” she answered, her voice hinting at an antagonistic smile.

Since taking Swain’s place as acting general, it had been necessary for Darius to become acquainted with every commander in the legion. As hard as it was to admit, Marcks was the best of the bunch. She was the strongest and most efficient. She ruled her battalion with an iron fist that soldiers dared not oppose, and that was dangerous, but also powerful. She hated his guts, and he hated hers. But together they were able to work out much better strategies, in war and in leadership, than either one of them would have come up with alone.

The fact that she had tried to get Darius killed - more than once - only to watch him survive and come out on top, gave her a respect for him that was not based solely in his title. She was learning.

It was not long before the battle would start. Five, ten minutes tops. Darius spent most of those minutes navigating through the ranks of soldiers, muttering trite words of intimidation whenever he encountered someone with a particularly rebellious look on their face. At the edge of the formation there was a sparse forest. The Dauntless Vanguard had not revealed themselves yet, but Noxian scouts had confirmed their presence.

He turned to Commander Fergus, who was standing with her hips swayed and her enormous machete-shaped blade resting atop her shoulder. Thankfully, she appeared to be sober.

“Lead your battalion into the forest with me. I won’t wait to have the Vanguard pierce us where they please.”

“Will do,” she said, turning to her troops and raising her blade effortlessly in the air. “You heard the man! We head into the forest and slice up every Demacian whelp we find! Forward march!”

Noxians did not march in time, nor did they remain in perfect square formations. If a Demacian march sounded like a steady war drum, then a Noxian march shook the earth with all the self-righteous enthusiasm of an insurgent mob. Darius and Commander Fergus walked at the front while their soldiers, behind them, started chanting a war cry of their own accord. The Vanguard would hear them coming. It wouldn’t make a difference.

About a quarter mile into the trees, arrows started raining. Anything that would have reached Darius’s face was deflected by his axe; the rest chinked his armor and fell uselessly to the ground. He was about to lower his axe when a Demacian soldier slammed into him sword-first.

The Vanguard had erupted from the trees like animals, though their skills and formation were disciplined. Much more disciplined than the average Demacian soldier. Darius felt it in his muscles with every blow he deflected. The first soldier who had challenged him sliced a sizeable gash into his arm, just before having his own legs severed beneath him. He fell, screaming, and Darius tried to ignore the fact that he wore the same polished blue uniform as Garen.

The Vanguard’s numbers were fewer than the average company, but every one of them was stronger. As Darius dodged beneath a blade and almost instantly felt a huge body weight slam into his back, he began to understand why this force had been so successful. They did not swing their swords aimlessly; they utilized every part of their body as extensions of their weapon, punishing a single mistake without mercy or hesitation. They were fast, skilled, and terrifyingly calm.

But none of them burned inside with the self-destructive fervor that gave Darius his purpose. He hadn’t come here today to get killed, or even to fight for his nation. He had come here to kill the one he loved, and destroy his final weakness.

His eyes were drawn to a presence not far off through the trees - a tiny glint of ocean blue that should have never stood out in a battlefield. He swore Garen caught his eyes at the same time, even as they both swung for their current enemies. The moment passed. The Demacian fell with a choked grunt, and Darius looked up, but Garen was already pursuing a battle further away from him.

He followed, being met with formidable resistance every step of the way. Each time he cut down an enemy, Garen seemed to move further. Soon enough Darius had found the edge of the conflict, and there was no one left to challenge him. Yet Garen disappeared behind the trees further on. This was purposeful.

He slowed his pace.

Why? Did Garen actually expect that they could interact in private anywhere in the surrounding ten miles? It simply wasn’t viable. One stray soldier would spell the end of both of their lives.

Then again - why was Darius bothering to even think about it?

It was that old habit which made him expect to enter the forest behind Garen and find a place of happiness. He felt the pain wracking his body and the blood making his skin stick, and that helped him remember the present. This was reality. This blood-soaked battleground, and the war that had raged over it for centuries. Nothing short of a revolution would change that, or allow anything else to exist.

He entered a clearing and found Garen standing there, head drooped, hands clawed, bloodstained, waiting for him. It looked as though there was no carefree boy left in that battle-hardened shell. If there wasn’t, then maybe that would make this easier.

Garen opened his mouth to speak, but was forced to raise his blade when Darius swung at him, roaring as though there was nothing human left in him, either. Metal clanged and dirt sprayed in a cacophonous symphony. The embellished sword met every swing with skill and grace, but held up with only half-hearted effort, and did not retaliate. Darius fought neither boy nor warrior, but something rawer and simpler than either - a bare human, stripped down to his instinctive skills and his bygone love, which bade him not to fight.

There would be no hesitation this time. By refusing to fight, Garen was only making it easier for Darius to finish this. He was pushed back swing-by-swing to the forest wall, where his back met violently with the stiff bark of a tree and he looked up to see an axe heading straight toward his face. Blood slicked the bark. The axe had clipped the shell of Garen’s ear. His eyes were scrunched closed, his neck twisted sideways to avoid a blow which would have mutilated him.

Darius yanked at the hilt of the axe with both hands to pull it free and try again. That should have been Garen’s chance to impale him and win the fight, or at least reposition himself. He did neither. He stayed where he was, opened his eyes to flood the clearing with unwanted memories, and said, “Darius.”

The grimace of initial pain had made way for an expression of calm and bitter acceptance. Even with Garen’s face spattered red, he appeared to Darius like an angel sent to judge him for every life he had cut short, every scrap he had stolen, every hateful glare he had shot and dispassionate decision he had ever made.

If life was hell, then Darius would pause for one second to glimpse this angel from another world and keep it in his mind forever. The axe pulled free and he stood dormant, poised to swing.

“I wish it didn’t have to end this way,” he uttered, low and shameful. Because he had already taken the risk of hesitating, and if he was going to bother saying anything to Garen before the end, he was going to say the truth.

"I'm just one splash of blood in a history of hundreds on your blade."

"They can't be compared to you."

"Regardless of what you say, it must be done,” Garen answered, taking charge of a responsibility that was not his own. “One of us has the opportunity to go on and live a great life, and never be doubted by our comrades. If neither of us take that opportunity, we both lose everything.  In another lifetime, Darius, we could have loved each other. But in this one it's impossible. And I can't kill you, Darius. But I know you can kill me."

There was a shout in the distance, and a flash of movement in far-off foliage. Darius raised his axe above his head, and let it fall.

There was nothing romantic about this death. It was ugly. Ugly as the sickening crunch of a breaking ribcage, ugly as the squelch of his body as the axe ripped free along with layers of splintered metal, cloth, and flesh. Garen fell forward with his arm outstretched and his face splashed in dirt. There was life, seemingly, still in his eyes. But he wouldn’t survive a wound like that.

Demacian soldiers began to appear, glancing first at Garen’s body and then charging with a fervor the likes of which Darius had never seen. One or two, he could take, but it sounded as though the entire Vanguard was gradually zeroing in on his position. Upon noticing their Captain’s absence, they might have rerouted their plan of attack. The ability to do so meant that they were winning.

The first soldier charged him before he could take anything from Garen’s body. The second leaped in from the side and nearly took his arm off, had he not let go of his axe, which lodged itself into the first soldier’s foot when it fell. The third swooped in amidst the first’s shriek of pain, and Darius grabbed the hilt of her sword just as the blade cut into the crook of his shoulder between neck and armor, saving himself from being sliced in half. He roared in pain and rage, yanking the sword out of his shoulder and splashing both of their faces with another layer of blood. A fourth was heading towards him and he was already occupied on all sides, his shoulder bleeding out in a way that would kill him in minutes. He never wondered what would happen with him the war once he was gone. He only wondered if his last willful act in life had been to take away with him the brightest soul in Valoran.

The fourth soldier dropped mid-step in a flash of red and silver, his throat slit. Darius knew who was responsible before he even saw her, perched atop the third soldier’s shoulders and ripping her blade through the soldier’s chest.

“Duck,” Katarina said, and without waiting, she swung her leg through Darius’s previous headspace and hit both of the remaining soldiers in the face, sending them temporarily to their knees. As the soldier under her dropped, she hopped to her feet and beckoned. “Hurry. Even _we_ can’t take a whole army.”

As she spoke, three more Demacian soldiers hopped from the bushes. Darius yanked his axe from the soldier’s foot and followed Katarina at a quarter of her speed. Branches fell behind him to slow their chase, slashed effortlessly from their bearings above. At this rate he wouldn’t outrun them, so the goal was to make it back to the rest of their forces alive, and fight together.

The Noxian wardrum grew in volume. Darius turned to fight, and Katarina dropped from the trees to yank his arm. “You’re coming back to camp.”

“The hell I am!”

“Idiot,” she scoffed, knocking him in the head with the base of her knife. “Would Swain be proud if you died from a treatable wound, because you were too stubborn to use your brain?”

She shoved him, and they ran together. When the main army came into view, Katarina shouted instructions before Darius could even think of what to say, and the soldiers charged without question, shielding their escape.

It felt wrong to retreat. Darius had accomplished his mission via surrender, and then pulled out without any further contributions. Was his life really worth so much, when all he had done was bring more blood and misery to Valoran?

More blood and misery. That’s right. That was Swain’s goal: to make sure everyone understood war. And Darius was a killing machine, perfect for the job of spreading misery.

“Darius?” Katarina said, her voice fading awash a steadily growing sea of white fuzz. “Dammit! Someone get a healer here, _now!_ ”

The sky faded into noisy spots which bloomed white, then red. He began to hear screams - the sounds of every person he had killed, especially the innocent ones. Garen hadn’t even bothered to make a sound.  


* * *

Noxus had lost the battle. Demacia owed their victory most of all to the soldiers of the Vanguard, each of whom went down screaming under the blades of multiple Noxian soldiers, taking limbs and lives with them in one final act of loyalty to their fallen captain. They had swept in from the flank and cleared the way for their comrades, who pierced straight through the disrupted Noxian army until they reached open fields. Now they marched towards Noxus.

Despite this result, a relatively large portion of the legion had survived with few injuries. They were the backlines who retreated after the battle went awry, likely under the prudent direction of Marcks. Most other Noxian commanders would have kept swinging even in the face of utter defeat, Darius included.

“Commander, please refrain from moving until-”

“I need to speak with Swain.”

“You couldn't possibly survive a trip back to the capital,” the healer warned, pushing against him with hands that his strength hardly even felt. He exited the tent, and Katarina followed him in silence for about twenty seconds.

“Nothing?” she remarked indignantly. It was the first time they had seen in other in years. “Not even a thank you?”

He was headed towards his quarters, calculating how long it would take to make it back to Noxus.

Katarina kept talking. “Don’t mind the bitch who saved your life, and was even a little happy to see you after all these years. Imagine that. I guess it’s hard to believe that anyone would be happy to see such a unsociable ass, but I was.”

He turned and met her head-on, standing several heads above and more than twice her width. His bandages bloomed red, yet he stood as though he couldn’t feel the wounds, fists clenched and feet apart, a breathing likeness of brutality and rage. She no longer recognized him. She was the most skilled and steady assassin in the Noxian army, yet in that moment, standing a hair’s breadth from a man who used to be her friend, her heart stuttered and went stale with fear.

“Don’t waste my time,” he rasped, before turning to leave her.

“Then don’t go back to the capital,” she argued between bated breaths, hands hovering over the belt which held her daggers. “The Demacians will make it there before you do. There’s no point.”

He stopped, realizing that Swain would have his hands full dealing with that threat. The forces guarding the capital were still fractured from the recent battle there, in which Jarvan III had met his end. Noxian citizens would assist them if the situation became dire. Nevertheless, the Demacians had a far better chance of breaking through this time than last time. According to scout reports, their other forces were positioned aggressively. After their victory here, they could make the call to close in on the capital all at once.

“We have to re-gather this legion and march back together,” Katarina continued. “You’ll get slaughtered if you’re caught on your own. And the forces at the capital will get slaughtered if we don’t help them.”

He saw a vision of streets washed with blood. The proud blue heraldry of Demacia would march through Noxus, demanding compliance, wetting their experienced blades with the blood of young thieves and old veterans. They would hear innocents scream, and understand the true meaning of war.

“Gather the legion,” Darius agreed, turning back. “And send a messenger to every Noxian force in the surrounding area.”

“The scouts should be heading out with today’s reports by the end of the night.”

“Stop them, and burn the reports. The scouts will send orders of a straight march to Demacia.”

“What?”

“The Demacians plan to destroy our capital. They'll send every soldier they can find, and leave their own nation undefended.”

“So we leave ours undefended, too?” she scoffed. “Just because _you_ don’t have a family doesn’t mean that everyone else-”

His hand shot for her throat and grasped empty air, as she re-appeared beside him. The tip of her dagger touched his neck and drew blood.

“-doesn’t matter.”

He looked at her through eyes that seemed to flicker red in the camp’s torchlight. “Your concern is family? Then think of your children. Think of the generations after us, who will spend their lives on the battlefield just as we have.” He swept her hand aside to face her, and both of them stood compliant after the momentary scuffle had run its course. “Maybe your kid won’t be as talented as you are. Maybe they’ll die in their very first battle, and rot unburied with a Demacian sword sticking out from their corpse.”

“What’s your point?”

“We look at war differently from what it is. It gives us purpose. It serves as the fuel of a nation which has raised soldiers from birth for centuries. War has not _taken_ enough for us to realize that there are more other things in life. More important things.”

She stood silent, lips parted, contemplating a truth that she had never had reason to consider.

“Why do you fight?” Darius asked.

“To crush the scum that poison this continent,” she answered as though by instinct, and by now it was.

“That’s not an answer,” he said simply, knowing with seething clarity that he would have spoken the same answer before meeting Swain. The old crow’s wisdom saw him past all the Noxian propaganda, and onto a stage where both nations fought for equally human reasons.

“When we reach Demacia, I’ll shed more innocent blood than their pristine nation has ever seen before. And when they are forced to recognize the final outcome of war, they’ll call for an end to it. Both nations left in ruins. Both nations forced to rebuild in peace.”

“You... really believe that will work?” she replied.

“If it doesn’t, then we truly are forsaken.”

They watched each other for a moment. Katarina sheathed her dagger. “I’ll have the new orders written.”

“Let me see them before they’re sent out. I expect your undivided support throughout the entirety of this operation.”

“You really are a Commander now,” she commented, as though in mourning for a lost friend. The man she saw before her was not the solemn boy she had known in the First Company.

He walked past her without another word. A discussion of rank was irrelevant. So was small talk, and friendship. He thought that perhaps another time, after nations had fallen, he could rebuild a part of what he had lost. When his body was not needed to withstand a war, he could lay that hardened shell to rest and focus on the inside.

Like refilling a broken hourglass, one grain at a time. His hands would turn to dust before the job was finished.


	10. Chapter 10

It was not until Darius watched the tall gates of Demacia rise above the hills that he realized he had never seen them before. He had always fought a faceless threat - an endless parade of blue soldiers that spawned from some unseen outpost on the other side of the world. This was their home. This was where they retreated for holiday suppers, raised their families, and smiled at each other as they toasted to better days.

The sun shone unimpeded amidst blue skies, and made their city glare with polished sophistication. Some Noxian soldiers stood in stupor. Most sneered and shouted war cries the moment they cleared the hill.

Darius heard a horn, and spotted movement on the battlements spanning the city walls. A battalion’s worth of foot soldiers stood before the gates. If the members of that meager force didn’t know they would be dying today, they knew now, witnessing the horde that approached them. They would serve as a sacrificial diversion to delay the inevitable. These nations did not know how to defend - only to skirmish. At this very moment, the Demacians would be smashing through the splintered plank which Noxus called its front gate.

No orders were necessary. This was the moment all Noxian soldiers had been trained to look forward to, and never been allowed to have. This battle would not end with just bloodshed, but with fire and devastation. These soldiers would take anything and everything they wanted, and in doing so, they would finally embody the true meaning of war.

It was hard to tell when Darius made the transition himself. He became drunk on power after his first swing scented the air with blood and sliced through the deafening roar of soldiers with a metallic shriek. The gate defenders were ground into a fresh doormat of broken bones and dying screams. Before the initial combat was even finished, the battering ram was rolled through still-fighting soldiers and the guts of their comrades to make its first assault on the gates.

One desperate soldier clawed at Darius’s neck, disarmed, blood covering half his face. Darius smashed his head into the battering ram as it whizzed past for a second assault, goring his features into a chunky red smear across the wood. If he could still scream, Darius didn’t hear it.

Ahead of him, impatient Noxian soldiers crashed their weapons again and again into the gates, breaking in a small side opening before the ram even finished its job. They fought each other for entrance, and bled against the splinters as they clawed their way through. Eventually the ram split the door in two, goring Noxians and Demacians alike with sharp wooden points. The Noxians flooded in through a cloud of dust and started swinging the moment they saw blue.

There were not many defenders left. The entrance courtyard became littered with skirmishes while Noxians flooded the surrounding streets. Colorful multi-story buildings spilled smoke and flames. Stubborn civilians finally fled, but were caught by the hair and ran through on their doorsteps.

Darius walked the gilded streets as though he were merely sightseeing, while his soldiers wreaked misery around him. Few cared for plundering valuables; they would scavenge the houses for lives to end rather than digging through chests and cupboards.

There was no clean end to an assault like this. The Noxians had scattered across the capital, spreading chaos through a nation which had only known peace and privilege within its safe white walls. In some courtyards Darius would watch a lone Noxian soldier die to a family of civilians, and walk past that same shivering family without being engaged. These people only wanted to protect themselves. They would wait inside their homes knowing there was nowhere else to hide in the entire capital, dreading the unlucky moment when a Noxian force of more than two approached.

One home stood perfectly defended by a single girl, her posture exhausted and her silver plate armor scuffed with blood. Suddenly he thought of Draven, laughing as he slung axes from the rooftops, before being shot down by arrows in an unfulfilling final act. He was prepared to blame himself for Draven’s death, if it happened. No innocent deserved mercy today; they were all complicit in the meaningless hatred which had tainted Valoran for all these years. And it only pissed him off more to see this girl so determined to defend her home, when it deserved to burn like all the rest, along with everyone inside it.

She raised her head as he approached, and her expression drooped with hopeless exhaustion. A dozen Noxian soldiers lay dead before her. Yet she still raised her staff as though she believed she could fend off one more.

She began to shout a spell in a light voice, and he broke her staff with one swift blow on the marble stairs, moving past her to grip the elegant golden doorknob of her home. She clawed at his leggings and cut her thin hands on the spikes of his armor, trying to drag him back with a body weight he hardly even felt.

“Please,” she sobbed, and for one second he felt an immovable clamp around his leg, fraught of magic. For all her efforts Darius believed this girl might have been a force to reckon with, before she was pushed to her limits defending one-on-twelve, and forced to realize that even she could not defend what mattered most to her.

He grasped her hair and threw her off of him, moving forward through an open doorway. He wanted her to watch as her loved ones were slaughtered, proving that even the strong could not defend everything, that the world would take as it pleased and leave nothing in return.

The sun shone through the open window upon a face which could have ended wars. There on the bedside, an open hand beckoning him forward. A bandaged chest, rising... and falling. It wasn’t a trick of the light.

Darius dropped his axe. As he sledged forward, all the weight of his armor converged to drag him down to his knees. He clutched the hand and felt its warmth. Not a trick, though it had to be. Darius had torn out his insides. He had done it himself, with that very axe.

The light voice came from behind him, so bright and clear despite her exhaustion - a trait that couldn’t be touched no matter how dire the circumstances. “You’re... _him,_ aren’t you?”

Him. The ruthless warmonger who had killed what he loved, and hardly bat an eyelash because of it. Of course he was.

His tears wet Garen’s forearm, painfully, as though they were hot razors pushing through after all the years he had denied them. He gripped the hand so tight he might have broken the bones of a more fragile possessor. “Will he wake?”

“I... don’t know.”

Outside the window, in some house they would never reach in time, sounded a scream that could have shaken the Void. The fighting would continue until the Noxian soldiers had made this city their own, and then abandoned it to ruin. He had to make it stop.

Yet as he stood, an inexplicable energy wrapped around his limbs and tried to keep him there, close to the boy he had loved and abandoned, and left for dead. It screamed threats in his mind that this was his only chance, that if he left now they would never find each other again. And he screamed back that he didn’t deserve to, anyhow.

“You need to be able to defend him,” he said.

“I... There are potions upstairs. They can help me regain my energy.”

“Get them,” he commanded. “And don’t stand outside. Leave the door open, make them think that this place has already had its fill. You defend him from here.”

She watched him for a moment, observing the moisture which betrayed stern eyes, and by some miracle judging that she could trust him. As she retreated into the hallway, Darius turned back to Garen, who looked as though he were sleeping through some inane dream.

He promised that he would make it stop. That the sacrifices were worth it. That he would do everything he could to forge peace, all because he loved that Demacian boy he met at the clearing. He loved him more than all the lives in Valoran, and he would kill them all if it meant peace in the end.

* * *

The Demacian throne room was made of white marble and tall blue pillars. Windows carved the ceiling into sun-like discs, and a gold-bordered blue rug stretched across the gleaming floor to the throne. Prince Jarvan IV stood in front of it, outlined with guards, expecting the Noxian intrusion with stubborn austerity. He stood here while his city burned, for his life was worth more than theirs and he knew it, whether he liked it or not.

There was no objection to Darius and his troops walking in. A battle here would do nothing; the Prince could only look towards the future. He had to preserve his birthright, and furthermore, his nation.

Darius left a considerable distance between them, respecting that birthright for the sake of peace. His voice, however, was not so accommodating. “The destruction continues until you call for a truce.”

The pause Jarvan left before his reply was indicative of surprise. In his experience, Noxians did not negotiate peace. They didn’t even negotiate. He was suspicious, and rightly so. “What would a truce do for you? My own troops occupy Noxian High Command as we speak. Any message I send wouldn’t reach them until tomorrow morning, at the soonest.”

“Your troops don’t kill innocents. Mine do. If you refuse to cooperate, then by tomorrow morning we can end the royal line and turn Demacia into a city of ghosts. My reasons don’t matter.”

“It seems perverse that I should be forced to bow to a nation of murderers, while my own army treats your citizens with human respect.”

“And for every minute you spend flaunting your pride instead of agreeing to simple terms, your people die.”

“There is only one thing stronger than my contempt for your wretched and misguided nation,” Jarvan declared, the pride in his voice degenerating into something ugly and shameful. “It is my love for my people. For them, I’ll declare a truce.”

But a truce wouldn’t last - not while Jarvan viewed him and every Noxian as a monster in human clothing. Peace would only come with work. With people like him and Garen telling the truth. With Noxians and Demacians coming to learn that they are not so different, after all.

He looked at Jarvan and tried to see what Garen saw in his best friend. There had to be something inside that hateful shell that could be reached.

“Jarvan,” he said. “I know what you saw when Sion tortured you. It’s a sight known by every Noxian captain, commander, and general, before they are allowed to take the rank. They are the ones who lead the massacres against your people, who interrogate the prisoners, who turn cities into graveyards. It’s a mistake to remove every Noxian officer’s ability to feel. It’s a mistake for the same reason it was put into purpose - so that every leading officer will make the call to kill, when given the opportunity. To fight rather than forgive.”

He was not going to tell the prideful Demacian prince not to let Noxus turn him into one of their own. He could only hope that Jarvan was intelligent enough to think it. That he wasn’t already too far gone.

“My troops will stay in the city,” Darius concluded, his tone remaining solemn. “They’ll take unoccupied houses and start clearing out the bodies. I won’t apologize for what either of us lost today.”

“You intend to bury them in a mass grave?” Jarvan asked, distaste fresh on his voice.

“Hundreds died. If we were to pile them outside the houses and wait for you dig a grave for each and every one, there would be a plague by the end of the week.”

He sneered even as he agreed. “Very well.”

As Darius and his company turned to leave, one Noxian soldier turned back and spit on the floor in Jarvan’s direction. She was angry. A perfect opportunity to destroy Demacia forever, abandoned in favor of peace? What was peace, to a Noxian?

Darius slammed his elbow into her and embedded his axe in her back before she had the chance to get off the floor. Her blood crawled across the marble floor and pooled around Jarvan’s foot.

No words were spoken, as the message came through loud and clear without them. The Noxian soldier was left there in the throne room as proof of her commander’s intentions. Anyone who stood in the way of peace was an enemy. Jarvan watched with a conflicted heart as his soldiers dragged her body away.

* * *

The Grand General’s quarters glowed warm in the light of the fireplace. It was daytime, though the clouds covered the sky as they always did, providing a welcome shade for the workers around the city. Swain observed the progress from the eye of the great skull housing High Command. He had won the election just in time for the ‘Devastation of Two Nations’, as the historians were calling it now. A fitting name, if an uncreative one.

In the aftermath of this devastation, the streets of Noxus looked more alive - more _human_ \- than they ever had before. Noxians generally avoided the streets wherever they could, remaining safe inside and traveling only with trustworthy company. Now they passed bricks to each other outside broken houses, and stewed pots of soup in city squares. Soldiers in blue heraldry offered blankets to vagrants in alleys, ignoring the glares they still received from those they had been fighting not weeks before. There was no room for pride where suffering stifled the air so completely. The people wanted to help each other more than they wanted to fight.

“You have changed the very soul of Valoran, General,” Swain commented fondly, turning away from the window to sit in one of his great, olive-colored armchairs. A side table stood beside it, stacked high with books. “Not that you will be making much use of your new rank, though you will be respected for it. Our soldiers have not forgotten the enmity that fueled their blades; they will look to their superiors for guidance.”

“They need to walk the streets, and see what the Demacians are doing for them.”

“Our soldiers are doing the same, in Demacia, though I imagine our soldiers feel that they are only following orders. I trust that Commander Marcks has kept them in check.”

“Is it so hard to recognize that they’re human?”

“For the past two hundred years our rhetoric has pitted us against the Demacians as though they are from another species, destined to be our enemies even before conception. It will take time to corral this viewpoint into something more civilized.”

Darius, too, turned away from the window to take a seat across from Swain. He wore simple clothes, though his body still felt racked with the iron weight of all those he had killed, directly and indirectly. More than any other soldier on either side.

“Without the war, people will need other things to focus on,” Darius observed, suddenly feeling very old, and displaced, his life’s purpose no longer relevant.

“You are correct. My job as a Noxian Grand General without a war is immense, and I should be working on it very soon. However, I seek a moment of peace before embarking across a storm-ravaged ocean. Jarvan has been rather... disagreeable, during the peace talks.”

The bird perched on the back of Swain’s armchair cawed loudly. Darius watched her, and Beatrice met his gaze with perfect curiosity. “Perhaps your mother can find peace.”

“My mother will never find peace. I suspect she is immortal, but I cannot predict what she will do after my passing. The black magic has made her a mindless slave to the mortal realm, likely to wreak havoc in her despair and become a deity that the Gray Order worships.”

“Would she enjoy that?”

“The departed soul of my true mother, you mean? Perhaps. She dedicated her life to the Order,” Swain sighed, decidedly indifferent to the subject. “And what about you, General? Have you fulfilled your purpose? Is there nothing left for you, in a world you sacrificed so much to save?”

The fire crackled before them, warmth licking his shins like some long-forgotten feeling of love. Darius picked at the callouses on his palms. “He’s alive.”

“Ah. Divine providence. There is something left, after all.”

“It should have been impossible. I must have broken almost all his ribs, severed his organs...”

“It is not wise to question miracles. Just be grateful that High Command has ‘forgotten’ your sentence in light of recent events.”

“I couldn’t face him. He deserves a better life.”

“And what if he never loves another? Is a ‘better life’ that of a retired soldier who lives in solitude, no battle to fight, and no excuse as to why the only one he loved abandoned him?”

His chest tightened, and he clenched his eyes shut as though to ward off the pain. “That’s not likely.”

“Whatever you choose to believe. But you will never know what he thinks of you until you swallow your childish fear and ask.”

He could imagine only unhappy endings. Anger, panic, disgust. A soldier who would never wake up. After years by his comatose side, the soldier would open his eyes and see the man who killed him, and lash out in fear. It was better to leave him. His sister would take care of him. And his friends... his friends in the Vanguard, who had all died in his honor. All of them.

Everything was in shambles. The world was being rebuilt, but at what cost? There was no way to know whether the next world would be a good one, and that was the worst part. Darius could only live on, and hope, someday, to make peace with his regrets.


	11. Epilogue

It was the peak of summer, and anyone who stood in the sunshine for longer than ten minutes was sure to find themselves glistening with sweat, but the florist didn’t mind. He enjoyed tending to the garden at this time, since the varied colors of the flora shined the brightest in the light of the sun, painting the yard with every stroke of the rainbow. It was hard to feel down while kissed with warmth and surrounded by so many colors. He would keep planting new life, and leave an old ghost behind with every seed.

The healers had forbidden him from ever picking up a weapon again. It was no longer necessary. With the war behind them, countless soldiers would find new professions. He was told to find one that would make him happy.

His sister called from within the shop. Something about a meeting with the College, really important, don’t wait up. And there’s more stuff about the war in the paper, but nothing really interesting.

The bell at the front door sounded a distant jingle as she departed. He stood up, wiping his brow, and hung his hat near the doorway as he entered the shade of the shop. The article in the paper was about a Demacian soldier who survived the attack on the gates; when the battering ram got through, he retreated and saved the lives of countless civilians by defending them from the Noxian siege. They had been publishing articles like this regularly for the past six months, to rebuild the nation’s morale. Always hopeful stories about war heroes and Noxians who demonstrated kindness following the Devastation. Nothing about the man who had stormed the throne room and demanded peace at any cost, slicing down his own comrade when she spat at the Demacian prince. Jarvan had changed that day. His hatred for the Noxians was slowly subsiding. When he spoke of them he almost sounded regretful.

In six months both nations had mostly rebuilt. Jarvan had been crowned King. The occasional Noxian walked the streets of Demacia and was spared a second glance, but nothing more. New policies regarding discrimination were very strict, and Demacia had grown accustomed to them quickly. Valoran was a free land.

Free, and yet, empty. The old ghosts of the war still haunted many soldiers, pulling their gaze out to a distant place where blood was still shed. The memorials were too large, and had too many names. A warrior’s hands were sometimes too rough to handle the delicate stems of flowers, and they would shake with the fear of being unable to cradle life without crushing it.

Some ghosts appeared in the doorway with the jingle of a bell, outfitted in black boots and casual red cotton, eyes wrinkled with fear and regret. The florist saw this and questioned his grasp on reality. But he stepped forward and felt the soft shirt fabric furrow in his hands, and knew it was real. More than that, he knew he had waited twenty years for this embrace, for the privilege of holding someone in his arms, and every second of waiting had been worth it.

Desperate hands combed through Garen’s hair and clutched him tight. The scent of the river appeared right there in the flower shop and overpowered every other fragrance with its poignant familiarity.

“I thought you would hate me,” Darius uttered. That voice so close at his ear, and free of the burden that had always tainted it with commanding rage. It had grown deeper and rougher with age, but at its heart was that same solemn boy from the clearing.

“You think I would hate you for doing your duty?”

“I betrayed you.”

“No. You preserved your future. Yours, and that of the world.”

“Nothing justifies what I did to you.”

Garen loosened his grip only to look upon Darius’s face and see how the green eyes averted in guilt, how the thin lips crinkled with contempt. As though he would truly never forgive himself. But Garen had forgiven him before it even happened, and he would not pull his own lips away until he had pressed through all his own soft longing and incessant admiration, and make Darius forgo his demons long enough to press back.

They collided with the wall of the shop, and Darius opened his eyes to a faceful of purple lilies. Their petals caressed his cheek with forgiveness; nature remained indifferent to the conflicts of humans, reviving from the ashes of any tragedy to ever befall them, without a sound.

They collided next with the workbench where Garen wrapped bouquets, and he did not fall onto his back so much as he leaned onto it, pulling Darius onto him with subtle intention. The gnarled skin of his scar became visible beneath a skewed collar, and that was what caused Darius to pull apart the buttons of his shirt and see what his careless hand had wrought.

Much of his original skin was gone, in a thick, imperfect diagonal from collar to abdomen. There were multitudinous layers of splotched tissue, stretched out over the hole in his chest very likely by magic, again and again until the incision was closed. If Garen was conscious, it would have been painful. And the months afterward, while his insides rebuilt themselves - torturous.

Darius shrunk further backwards with every second he looked at it, contempt once more loosening his jaw and pulling together his brows. He would have removed himself from the table had Garen not sat up on his elbow, gripped Darius’s wrist, and forced him to touch the scar. It couldn’t be as scary once he had touched it.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Garen said. “Just one more wound I endured and lived past. Like all the rest.”

“This will be on your body forever.”

“A reminder of the war we both suffered, and lived past. What matters now is that we are alive. We live in a different world than we used to. One that allows love to exist, and not just under certain conditions. Don’t let a dead war drag you back into its grasp.”

His fingers, slowly, relaxed and followed the scar to its lower tip. Garen let go of his wrist and pulled him back into a kiss. They were both harsh and unpracticed, pushing into each other like swords in a dance, knowing nothing except the unrelenting darkness that had kept them apart all these years. The loneliness. The anger.

It would all be forgotten in this one dance. A darkness that had seemed eternal, washed out by the blood and tears of a single man who had known the light. He had held it in his arms, heard its voice, felt its presence bloom through his heart and eventually see its vines reach past every edge of Valoran.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so very much for reading. I've been pleasantly surprised by the feedback on this fic, and I appreciate every comment more than you know. <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Fanart for In Another Lifetime](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7042504) by [deruzard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deruzard/pseuds/deruzard)




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